You 'ought' to behave this way

[mrswdk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%9 ... .22_oughts

Is there any valid way of establishing a moral goal that ought to be achieved, or are people who subscribe to a system of morals just expressing what they want to see achieved?

[Army of GOD]

>implying that morality is objective

[crispybits]

Good question. There's probably several valid ways, just like there's several valid ways of measuring the speed of a vehicle or the disance between two points on a sphere. I think we're getting closer to them as the conversation moves on and we focus on things like the well being of living things, but I don't think we're there yet because it's all still quite fuzzy around the edges and there is so much that is still open to interpretation and debate even within these kinds of definitions. It's like with any understanding of the nature of reality, we start off with guesses and false starts and misunderstandings, and as time progresses we learn more and we ask better questions and make better observations and we continually package another incremental slice of the unknown or the uncertain into what is known and certain (as much as anything ever can be). In terms of the moral question the conversation is still in it's infancy (and there are reasons why it hasn't progressed as rapidly as the scientific conversation has in the past couple of hundred years) so anyone that claims to have one of those valid ways may be close to the underlying truth of things, but any claims or assertions should be treated tentatively and we should be looking for ways to test everything.

[nietzsche]

Good question. There's probably several valid ways, just like there's several valid ways of measuring the speed of a vehicle or the disance between two points on a sphere. I think we're getting closer to them as the conversation moves on and we focus on things like the well being of living things, but I don't think we're there yet because it's all still quite fuzzy around the edges and there is so much that is still open to interpretation and debate even within these kinds of definitions. It's like with any understanding of the nature of reality, we start off with guesses and false starts and misunderstandings, and as time progresses we learn more and we ask better questions and make better observations and we continually package another incremental slice of the unknown or the uncertain into what is known and certain (as much as anything ever can be). In terms of the moral question the conversation is still in it's infancy (and there are reasons why it hasn't progressed as rapidly as the scientific conversation has in the past couple of hundred years) so anyone that claims to have one of those valid ways may be close to the underlying truth of things, but any claims or assertions should be treated tentatively and we should be looking for ways to test everything.

I like you crispybits. Wanna go out?

I was annoying myself trying to come up with a way to tell Mrs. WDK to think a bit more and re-elaborate her question because it was, well, lazy to say the least, and at the same time not to offend the cheap slut. But your response covers it. Thank you.

[crispybits]

Sure, any time you're in London hit me up we'll go drink beers

Slightly off topic - it annoys me when people say that science can have nothing to say about morality. "You can't get an ought from an is" and all that. What we have with the scientific method is the most, no the only, truly proven successful method for us to learn about the reality around us. To rule it out as irrelevant when it comes to some of the most important questions we as a species have to ask ourselves is like saying we want to play basketball, but without the ball.... or the hoops.... or the court....

Totally off topic - why do there seem to be more food ads on TV when I'm doing a 24 hour fast?

[notyou2]

Sure, any time you're in London hit me up we'll go drink beers

Slightly off topic - it annoys me when people say that science can have nothing to say about morality. "You can't get an ought from an is" and all that. What we have with the scientific method is the most, no the only, truly proven successful method for us to learn about the reality around us. To rule it out as irrelevant when it comes to some of the most important questions we as a species have to ask ourselves is like saying we want to play basketball, but without the ball.... or the hoops.... or the court....

Totally off topic - why do there seem to be more food ads on TV when I'm doing a 24 hour fast?

Because the government knows everything about you and they are sharing your information with the conglomerates, so they then target you.

[crispybits]

But I haz willpower - I've proved it, so if they know this they're wasting money or I'm some sort of terror suspect and this is stage 1 (stage 2 being waterboarding...)

[mrswdk]

Good question. There's probably several valid ways, just like there's several valid ways of measuring the speed of a vehicle or the disance between two points on a sphere. I think we're getting closer to them as the conversation moves on and we focus on things like the well being of living things, but I don't think we're there yet because it's all still quite fuzzy around the edges and there is so much that is still open to interpretation and debate even within these kinds of definitions. It's like with any understanding of the nature of reality, we start off with guesses and false starts and misunderstandings, and as time progresses we learn more and we ask better questions and make better observations and we continually package another incremental slice of the unknown or the uncertain into what is known and certain (as much as anything ever can be). In terms of the moral question the conversation is still in it's infancy (and there are reasons why it hasn't progressed as rapidly as the scientific conversation has in the past couple of hundred years) so anyone that claims to have one of those valid ways may be close to the underlying truth of things, but any claims or assertions should be treated tentatively and we should be looking for ways to test everything.

So basically, 'we don't know now but maybe it'll be possible in the future'?

[Metsfanmax]

Is there any valid way of establishing a moral goal that ought to be achieved, or are people who subscribe to a system of morals just expressing what they want to see achieved?

Is this question actually a valid question, or is it just you expressing that you don't like people who believe in objective morality?

[mrswdk]

Is there any valid way of establishing a moral goal that ought to be achieved, or are people who subscribe to a system of morals just expressing what they want to see achieved?

Is this question actually a valid question, or is it just you expressing that you don't like people who believe in objective morality?

Why would I dislike someone just because their understanding of morality differs from mine?

I am genuinely asking. Feel free to put forward whatever case you like.

[Dukasaur]

Slightly off topic - it annoys me when people say that science can have nothing to say about morality. "You can't get an ought from an is" and all that. What we have with the scientific method is the most, no the only, truly proven successful method for us to learn about the reality around us. To rule it out as irrelevant when it comes to some of the most important questions we as a species have to ask ourselves is like saying we want to play basketball, but without the ball.... or the hoops.... or the court....

I'm sorry, but that's the most basic point there.

The fact is, you can't get an ought from an is.

You can analyse reality and come up with all kinds of rules. If you want to accomplish x then you had better do x*. The better your analysis, the better your rules can be. But none of it answers the question of "why do you want to do x?"

You can talk about "happiness for the greatest number" but it's only a subjective opinion that we should seek happiness. What objective reason is there that universal misery is not the goal?

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive? It's only our prejudice that says we should. Perhaps the sooner we die off, the sooner the Earth will come to its real fruiting, under the species of intelligent octopii or whatever will rule after us.

You can talk about "survival of life on earth" but what except our own selfish desire to live tells us that life on Earth is a good thing? Perhaps Earth as a lifeless ball of radioactive glass is what the Creators envisioned, and the sooner we stop pussyfooting around and start building some decent atomic stockpiles, the better. Callisto is a lifeless rock and it's stunningly beautiful.

I'm a living thing, and I'm naturally prejudiced in favour of life, but what, other than my instinctive prejudice dictates that life should continue? In the end it probably will not. Despite squirming through one theory after another, we can't find any decent shred of hope that the universe will not continue to expand forever, until all interaction ceases and every system ceases to exist. So why should we struggle to buck the trend, when in the end we will fail no matter what? The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that entropy will always increase, that in the end destruction will always outpace creation. If the cards weren't so heavily stacked against us I might have something more to say.

[Metsfanmax]

Is there any valid way of establishing a moral goal that ought to be achieved, or are people who subscribe to a system of morals just expressing what they want to see achieved?

Is this question actually a valid question, or is it just you expressing that you don't like people who believe in objective morality?

Why would I dislike someone just because their understanding of morality differs from mine?

I am genuinely asking. Feel free to put forward whatever case you like.

If there was any valid way of doing so yet discovered, you wouldn't need to ask this question because everyone would know about it. But there are hints of things that allow us to recognize that there are some moral beliefs that are shared fairly widely across societies. You don't have to call these things we ought to do, but they're not totally far from that. A society where there wasn't a general rule against lying would fall apart quickly -- if you can't trust something basic like asking someone what time it is, how can anyone make any progress? A society where murder isn't punished would be one where people would be constantly on guard against being killed, and would be much less productive. That society wouldn't work either.

The folks who go all the way to moral relativism are making the same mistake they accuse the moral objectivists of doing. They infer that because there are moral differences between societies, that there ought to always be moral differences between societies. But that is surely just as wrong as the thing that their moral relativism stands in objection to. It is possible for societies to be wrong about their practices, and indeed most of history shows that societies tended to correct and converge on a few major value concepts. A lot of confusion in the moral relativism debate occurs because people misconstrue societal customs as representing different social values. Societies where infanticide occurs usually don't love their children any less than societies where this is not practiced.

But none of it answers the question of "why do you want to do x?"

Ethical philosophy isn't interested in answering that question. It is a given that people want to do x. Moral systems are there to allow them to do x to the greatest extent possible. The trick is finding the right system that maximizes their desire to do "x" without infringing upon other people's desire to do "y". There may not be any uniquely defined way to do this, but that's a separate issue.

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive?

This is a relevant point that you cannot brush away as easily as you do. There are probably some metaphysical arguments one could make about how self-aware species introduce new things into the mix that require more care in answering this question. For example, if there are no self-aware beings, does the world even exist in any meaningful sense? I mean, one could make the argument that our species should survive precisely because without conscious beings the world has no value at all.

[nietzsche]

[mrswdk]

If there was any valid way of doing so yet discovered, you wouldn't need to ask this question because everyone would know about it. But there are hints of things that allow us to recognize that there are some moral beliefs that are shared fairly widely across societies.

There's about a billion people, spread around the globe, who are Muslims. Does that show that Allah is real, or does that just show that there are lots of people who believe in Allah?

A society where there wasn't a general rule against lying would fall apart quickly -- if you can't trust something basic like asking someone what time it is, how can anyone make any progress?

There is no rule requiring people to be truthful when you ask them what the time is.

This point is a bit of a straw man btw, unless you can come up with a reason why society should be held together. I get that people within a society generally want the society to remain cohesive, and so they produce rules that will help keep that society operating smoothly, but nowhere in that is there any implication of a moral requirement to maintain society.

But none of it answers the question of "why do you want to do x?"

Ethical philosophy isn't interested in answering that question. It is a given that people want to do x. Moral systems are there to allow them to do x to the greatest extent possible.

And what if some people don't want to do x?

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive?

This is a relevant point that you cannot brush away as easily as you do. There are probably some metaphysical arguments one could make about how self-aware species introduce new things into the mix that require more care in answering this question. For example, if there are no self-aware beings, does the world even exist in any meaningful sense? I mean, one could make the argument that our species should survive precisely because without conscious beings the world has no value at all.

Why does the world need to be populated by sentient beings who value its existence?

[/]

As a believer in enlightened self-interest, I have said before that I do not believe morals exists. I do however believe in its closest relative: "morale". You can say any random thing that pops into your head; "Let's go build a tree fort!" and depending on the audience, it can be "good", "evil", "pointless", "important", etc. The only things that are important to the equation are two simple factors:

1. Increase pleasure
2. Decrease distress

Whether you are conscious of it or not, this is pretty much everything in your, heck nearly every other mammal's entire life; every conflict, every goal, every law, and a good chunk of your decisions. From cradle to grave, you are trained with positive and negative reinforcement interconnecting concepts and stimuli with emotions that you perceive to be morality.

If you don't believe me, can you name any reason anyone has for conflict, mundane or grand, that does not fall into one of the two?

Increase pleasure:
- Like to hit people
- Want more stuff
- Like to be proven right
- Protecting someone/something "good" (because they agree with me, give me stuff, has a nice face, or any other reason that gives me a positive emotion)

Decrease distress
- Don't want to be hit by other person
- Want to keep current stuff away from others
- Hate being proven wrong
- Other person does something "evil" or "wrong" (because they like the wrong team, worship the wrong god, take pleasure in weird gross stuff, or any other thing that I dislike.)

Without those things, why would you have anything but apathy for a cause? For real life evidence of this fact, I recommend the following article, that documents how a person (a very smart person even) functions without emotion to guide their motives in life.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling- ... -8k8v.html

[nietzsche]

The only things that are important to the equation are two simple factors:

1. Increase pleasure
2. Decrease distress

Whether you are conscious of it or not

Yes, only I would like to add that it's about perception. The perception of pain or pleasure.

That's why we do things that look foolish to others or even to ourselves in retrospective.

And about the bit about training/associations, at an early age we are not good at questioning others actions so we end up absorbing our role models fears without filtering. It's as if we put ourselves in their persona and mimic beliefs in ourselves and we store them in deep places out of the reach or our logical thinking.

[nietzsche]

And about enlightened self interest, i had never heard that concept, but the idea has always been obvious to me. I don't think it changes how we approach the subject though. The issue here is what you call you.

We have changing ideas of what it's we are. At times we are only ourselves, other times we are our family, and other times the community, etc.

So if we feel we are the community, we would value highgly a set of rules that we would perceive helps us on our illusion of control.

[crispybits]

Slightly off topic - it annoys me when people say that science can have nothing to say about morality. "You can't get an ought from an is" and all that. What we have with the scientific method is the most, no the only, truly proven successful method for us to learn about the reality around us. To rule it out as irrelevant when it comes to some of the most important questions we as a species have to ask ourselves is like saying we want to play basketball, but without the ball.... or the hoops.... or the court....

I'm sorry, but that's the most basic point there.

The fact is, you can't get an ought from an is.

You can analyse reality and come up with all kinds of rules. If you want to accomplish x then you had better do x*. The better your analysis, the better your rules can be. But none of it answers the question of "why do you want to do x?"

You can talk about "happiness for the greatest number" but it's only a subjective opinion that we should seek happiness. What objective reason is there that universal misery is not the goal?

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive? It's only our prejudice that says we should. Perhaps the sooner we die off, the sooner the Earth will come to its real fruiting, under the species of intelligent octopii or whatever will rule after us.

You can talk about "survival of life on earth" but what except our own selfish desire to live tells us that life on Earth is a good thing? Perhaps Earth as a lifeless ball of radioactive glass is what the Creators envisioned, and the sooner we stop pussyfooting around and start building some decent atomic stockpiles, the better. Callisto is a lifeless rock and it's stunningly beautiful.

I'm a living thing, and I'm naturally prejudiced in favour of life, but what, other than my instinctive prejudice dictates that life should continue? In the end it probably will not. Despite squirming through one theory after another, we can't find any decent shred of hope that the universe will not continue to expand forever, until all interaction ceases and every system ceases to exist. So why should we struggle to buck the trend, when in the end we will fail no matter what? The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that entropy will always increase, that in the end destruction will always outpace creation. If the cards weren't so heavily stacked against us I might have something more to say.

I think you've misunderstood one critical thing in this, and it's probably best demonstrated by asking you a few simple questions:

What "ought" gravity do?
What "ought" osmosis do?
What "ought" oxidisation do?

These are all clearly malformed questions. There is no "ought" there there is only "is". Gravity does this, etc. Why should we assume that morality is any different? Why should we start with the presupposition that morality is different to these other things? You could argue that these other things are physical, materialistic things and morality is purely conceptual, but every metric we use to determine morality is based on physical, materialistic criteria. Happiness can be measured through hormonal levels, brain scans, etc. Compassion and empathy can be measured in terms of putting test subjects into situations and both measuring physiological changes and also behaviours. There is not a single criteria by which we judge if a situation is moral (barring some religious and quasi-religious spiritual claims) that is not measurable in terms of the physcial changes to either the subject or the situation (and most oten a combination of both).

So to the underlined part of your post. This is answerable by asking what it is we are attempting to quantify when we talk about moral or immoral. Morality is all about behaviour. Moral/immoral are distinctions made only in situations where the subject has a choice to make about behaving in any number of different ways, and is measured both on the intention of the subject and the results of the behaviour (to varying degrees depending on your school of thought). Yes it's easy to say "why should misery be objectively worse than happiness?" but this ignores what actually happens in the real world. If I was to set up a situation where two people are locked in separate rooms for one hour, and one has a choice to press a button or not, knowing that the button will cause the person in the next room misery, but that there are no other effects to pushing the button and both subjects are released on the hour mark, is there any moral system that would say that the person with the button would be moral to push it? Not pushing the button is clearly the moral choice (as far as I'm aware, I don't know of any moral system that would consider the arbitrary causing of misery to another human being for no good reason to be a moral act). Therefore misery is objectively worse than neutral, and should not be our moral goal.

You can do this kind of isolation treatment via thought experiment for all sorts of metrics. Causing misery comes out bad in the absence of other effects. Causing happiness comes out good in the absence of other effects. And just like you can start from ancient understandings of science and keep asking more questions and devising better experiments, so you can do with morality. You only need the most simple of assumptions to go from, and when every moral system agrees that X is good and Y is bad, we can use X and Y as our foundational assumptions to build up our understanding incrementally, just like with every other way we understand reality, and we can use the scientific method to do it.

[crispybits]

Good question. There's probably several valid ways, just like there's several valid ways of measuring the speed of a vehicle or the disance between two points on a sphere. I think we're getting closer to them as the conversation moves on and we focus on things like the well being of living things, but I don't think we're there yet because it's all still quite fuzzy around the edges and there is so much that is still open to interpretation and debate even within these kinds of definitions. It's like with any understanding of the nature of reality, we start off with guesses and false starts and misunderstandings, and as time progresses we learn more and we ask better questions and make better observations and we continually package another incremental slice of the unknown or the uncertain into what is known and certain (as much as anything ever can be). In terms of the moral question the conversation is still in it's infancy (and there are reasons why it hasn't progressed as rapidly as the scientific conversation has in the past couple of hundred years) so anyone that claims to have one of those valid ways may be close to the underlying truth of things, but any claims or assertions should be treated tentatively and we should be looking for ways to test everything.

So basically, 'we don't know now but maybe it'll be possible in the future'?

Not quite - more like "sometimes, but tentatively and we should be trying to get better at it at all times"

[Metsfanmax]

If there was any valid way of doing so yet discovered, you wouldn't need to ask this question because everyone would know about it. But there are hints of things that allow us to recognize that there are some moral beliefs that are shared fairly widely across societies.

There's about a billion people, spread around the globe, who are Muslims. Does that show that Allah is real, or does that just show that there are lots of people who believe in Allah?

Not a relevant question. A better one might be to ask -- there's about seven billion people who mostly believe in the existence of supernatural deities. Does that mean that belief in the supernatural is a key part of human nature?

There is no rule requiring people to be truthful when you ask them what the time is.

And yet what are the chances that if you ask a stranger for the time, they'll lie to you? The rule may not have come from up high on a stone tablet, but everyone follows it anyway. This despite there being virtually no harm that can come to them if they don't tell the truth, and no obvious benefit that comes to them if they do.

This point is a bit of a straw man btw, unless you can come up with a reason why society should be held together. I get that people within a society generally want the society to remain cohesive, and so they produce rules that will help keep that society operating smoothly, but nowhere in that is there any implication of a moral requirement to maintain society.

Stable societies generally just allow more stable life for the people in them. Empirically, people live longer, healthier lives in modern times when we have allowed progress to be made collectively, compared to a few thousand years ago where we lived in something like the state of nature. If you have to worry about the guy next door raping your wife and killing you, that just decreases your quality of life with no compensation for it. The existence of a set of stable rules allows for the prospering of the individuals in it, but the rules can only be enforced if the people in it work together to sustain them. So it is not that I somehow value society in general; I just recognize that society is what allows individual people to obtain more of what they really want in life.

But none of it answers the question of "why do you want to do x?"

Ethical philosophy isn't interested in answering that question. It is a given that people want to do x. Moral systems are there to allow them to do x to the greatest extent possible.

And what if some people don't want to do x?

I'm defining x generally as the things people want to do. Not everyone wants to do the same thing, and a good moral system allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't conflict with what other people want to do.

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive?

This is a relevant point that you cannot brush away as easily as you do. There are probably some metaphysical arguments one could make about how self-aware species introduce new things into the mix that require more care in answering this question. For example, if there are no self-aware beings, does the world even exist in any meaningful sense? I mean, one could make the argument that our species should survive precisely because without conscious beings the world has no value at all.

Why does the world need to be populated by sentient beings who value its existence?

This is a complicated question, I don't have the answer to it. It just seems like a non-trivial question to answer. If there are no sentient beings in the world to provide it value, then its value isn't zero; it has no value. This is important because Dukasaur's argument is that maybe the Earth is somehow 'better off' without us around. This is a meaningless proposition. We really cannot compare the situations where sentient beings do and do not exist.

[mrswdk]

If there was any valid way of doing so yet discovered, you wouldn't need to ask this question because everyone would know about it. But there are hints of things that allow us to recognize that there are some moral beliefs that are shared fairly widely across societies.

There's about a billion people, spread around the globe, who are Muslims. Does that show that Allah is real, or does that just show that there are lots of people who believe in Allah?

Not a relevant question. A better one might be to ask -- there's about seven billion people who mostly believe in the existence of supernatural deities. Does that mean that belief in the supernatural is a key part of human nature?

If it is a key part of human nature then why do a substantial number of people not believe in a deity?

Whether or not superstition and religious belief are innate human qualities, I don't see what knowledge about our world could be gleaned from humanity's possession of this characteristic other than that humans tend to want to believe in something bigger than themselves.

There is no rule requiring people to be truthful when you ask them what the time is.

And yet what are the chances that if you ask a stranger for the time, they'll lie to you? The rule may not have come from up high on a stone tablet, but everyone follows it anyway. This despite there being virtually no harm that can come to them if they don't tell the truth, and no obvious benefit that comes to them if they do.

Looking at your watch or phone and telling them the time is the easiest response. That's hardly indicative of humanity's innate sense of morality.

This point is a bit of a straw man btw, unless you can come up with a reason why society should be held together. I get that people within a society generally want the society to remain cohesive, and so they produce rules that will help keep that society operating smoothly, but nowhere in that is there any implication of a moral requirement to maintain society.

Stable societies generally just allow more stable life for the people in them. Empirically, people live longer, healthier lives in modern times when we have allowed progress to be made collectively, compared to a few thousand years ago where we lived in something like the state of nature. If you have to worry about the guy next door raping your wife and killing you, that just decreases your quality of life with no compensation for it.

That has much more to do with better medicine and diets than it does to do with the reduction of rape-related stress.

but the rules can only be enforced if the people in it work together to sustain them. So it is not that I somehow value society in general; I just recognize that society is what allows individual people to obtain more of what they really want in life.

That still doesn't explain why this is a moral obligation, and not merely a pragmatic consideration on the part of people who benefit from living in a society.

I'm defining x generally as the things people want to do. Not everyone wants to do the same thing, and a good moral system allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't conflict with what other people want to do.

If you prevent person 1 from doing x on the grounds that it conflicts with person 2 doing y, then you are preventing person 1 from doing what they want to do. If you allow person 1 to do x and it prevents person 2 from doing y, then you are preventing person 2 from doing what they want to do. Either way, someone gets told they can't do something that they want to do.

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive?

This is a relevant point that you cannot brush away as easily as you do. There are probably some metaphysical arguments one could make about how self-aware species introduce new things into the mix that require more care in answering this question. For example, if there are no self-aware beings, does the world even exist in any meaningful sense? I mean, one could make the argument that our species should survive precisely because without conscious beings the world has no value at all.

Why does the world need to be populated by sentient beings who value its existence?

This is a complicated question, I don't have the answer to it.

So if I propose that there is no need for humanity to survive, what would you say?

[Metsfanmax]

Whether or not superstition and religious belief are innate human qualities, I don't see what knowledge about our world could be gleaned from humanity's possession of this characteristic other than that humans tend to want to believe in something bigger than themselves.

That alone is an interesting insight. Moral systems are there to improve the situation of humans. If we want to do that well, we need to know how humans actually work; what their true desires are. There is this separate discussion we can have about whether we should care about human worth to begin with; but, assuming that we do, we can't very well have a useful moral system if we aren't considering what human nature is.

That has much more to do with better medicine and diets than it does to do with the reduction of rape-related stress.

Better medicine and better dietary practices only came about because we exist in relatively stable societies that allow for the pursuit of medical advances. We can't have scientists and doctors if everyone is growing/hunting their own food and there is no market for trading goods.

but the rules can only be enforced if the people in it work together to sustain them. So it is not that I somehow value society in general; I just recognize that society is what allows individual people to obtain more of what they really want in life.

That still doesn't explain why this is a moral obligation, and not merely a pragmatic consideration on the part of people who benefit from living in a society.

Indeed. That is why I caution that this is a preliminary discussion; we don't yet know precisely how to go from these pragmatic considerations to strong moral arguments. But the seeds are there. If we know that certain behaviors are bad for society, and we value society because of its beneficial effects on individuals, then we ought to prohibit those certain behaviors.

I'm defining x generally as the things people want to do. Not everyone wants to do the same thing, and a good moral system allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't conflict with what other people want to do.

If you prevent person 1 from doing x on the grounds that it conflicts with person 2 doing y, then you are preventing person 1 from doing what they want to do. If you allow person 1 to do x and it prevents person 2 from doing y, then you are preventing person 2 from doing what they want to do. Either way, someone gets told they can't do something that they want to do.

Yes. But if you make this argument, then you've implicitly conceded that it's a bad thing that we stopped someone from doing what they want to do. If you accept this, then you accept that there are at least some sort of moral truths. Your point simply means that there will be some instances where not everyone can get what they want; but this is true regardless of whether or not we enforce an objective moral code. The moral code should help to minimize the damage from these conflicts.

You can talk about "survival of the species" but what objective reason is there that our species should survive?

This is a relevant point that you cannot brush away as easily as you do. There are probably some metaphysical arguments one could make about how self-aware species introduce new things into the mix that require more care in answering this question. For example, if there are no self-aware beings, does the world even exist in any meaningful sense? I mean, one could make the argument that our species should survive precisely because without conscious beings the world has no value at all.

Why does the world need to be populated by sentient beings who value its existence?

This is a complicated question, I don't have the answer to it.

So if I propose that there is no need for humanity to survive, what would you say?

This is a meaningless statement. In order to make this claim, you need to be able to envision a world without any self-conscious beings. But this is an obviously self-defeating proposition. There's no way for us to envision such a thing; none of us can comprehend our own non-existence, and certainly not the non-existence of all self-aware beings. We don't know what it means for the world to exist without anyone there to recognize it. We must accept that there are humans who do have their own desires, and unless we kill every single self-aware being at the same time, then our actions do have consequences on other beings with desires.

[mrswdk]

Whether or not superstition and religious belief are innate human qualities, I don't see what knowledge about our world could be gleaned from humanity's possession of this characteristic other than that humans tend to want to believe in something bigger than themselves.

That alone is an interesting insight. Moral systems are there to improve the situation of humans. If we want to do that well, we need to know how humans actually work; what their true desires are. There is this separate discussion we can have about whether we should care about human worth to begin with; but, assuming that we do, we can't very well have a useful moral system if we aren't considering what human nature is.

There's a snag there then, because I don't share that assumption. Personally I don't consider humanity to have any innate worth. Other beings have worth to me in that they can help me achieve things, but they and I do not, in and of ourselves, have innate worth.

That has much more to do with better medicine and diets than it does to do with the reduction of rape-related stress.

Better medicine and better dietary practices only came about because we exist in relatively stable societies that allow for the pursuit of medical advances. We can't have scientists and doctors if everyone is growing/hunting their own food and there is no market for trading goods.

Yeah, I agree. I just wanted to tie that loose end rather than simply delete it.

but the rules can only be enforced if the people in it work together to sustain them. So it is not that I somehow value society in general; I just recognize that society is what allows individual people to obtain more of what they really want in life.

That still doesn't explain why this is a moral obligation, and not merely a pragmatic consideration on the part of people who benefit from living in a society.

Indeed. That is why I caution that this is a preliminary discussion; we don't yet know precisely how to go from these pragmatic considerations to strong moral arguments. But the seeds are there. If we know that certain behaviors are bad for society, and we value society because of its beneficial effects on individuals, then we ought to prohibit those certain behaviors.

Agreed. I don't see any need (or ability) to transfer that into a moral code though.

I'm defining x generally as the things people want to do. Not everyone wants to do the same thing, and a good moral system allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't conflict with what other people want to do.

If you prevent person 1 from doing x on the grounds that it conflicts with person 2 doing y, then you are preventing person 1 from doing what they want to do. If you allow person 1 to do x and it prevents person 2 from doing y, then you are preventing person 2 from doing what they want to do. Either way, someone gets told they can't do something that they want to do.

Yes. But if you make this argument, then you've implicitly conceded that it's a bad thing that we stopped someone from doing what they want to do. If you accept this, then you accept that there are at least some sort of moral truths. Your point simply means that there will be some instances where not everyone can get what they want; but this is true regardless of whether or not we enforce an objective moral code. The moral code should help to minimize the damage from these conflicts.

I'm not saying that. I'm just pointing out the contradiction in saying that the rules are there to help people do what they want, and that the rules achieve this by preventing other people from doing what they want.

Why does the world need to be populated by sentient beings who value its existence?

This is a complicated question, I don't have the answer to it.

So if I propose that there is no need for humanity to survive, what would you say?

This is a meaningless statement. In order to make this claim, you need to be able to envision a world without any self-conscious beings.

No I don't. All I need to be able to do is to recognize that there is no innate reason why humanity should survive.

[Metsfanmax]

There's a snag there then, because I don't share that assumption. Personally I don't consider humanity to have any innate worth. Other beings have worth to me in that they can help me achieve things, but they and I do not, in and of ourselves, have innate worth.

...

No I don't. All I need to be able to do is to recognize that there is no innate reason why humanity should survive.

You're defining innate worth in a way such that your conclusion is tautological. But in doing so, you're just answering the wrong question. It is clearly true that without some sort of rule being applied by a higher power, there's no reason why humanity has to exist from the point of view of the universe. But here I'm not interested in answering the question of whether the existence of humanity is somehow a good thing. (There are people who discuss that, but we don't have to go all the way there.) Humans do exist, and they have desires. As long as they do, it is a good thing if they can achieve those desires. If you want a strong argument, you have to dispute that latter claim: you have to show why it doesn't matter if other people feel pain (say). Do you believe that?

Indeed. That is why I caution that this is a preliminary discussion; we don't yet know precisely how to go from these pragmatic considerations to strong moral arguments. But the seeds are there. If we know that certain behaviors are bad for society, and we value society because of its beneficial effects on individuals, then we ought to prohibit those certain behaviors.

Agreed. I don't see any need (or ability) to transfer that into a moral code though.

A moral code is simply a statement of the things we think people should or should not do.

I'm not saying that. I'm just pointing out the contradiction in saying that the rules are there to help people do what they want, and that the rules achieve this by preventing other people from doing what they want.

There's no contradiction, and it takes only a moment's notice to realize this. The rules help people get most of what they want, most of the time. To achieve that, you sometimes need to prevent some people from getting some of what they want. But as we both agree, the enforcement of the rules has allowed the development of objectively better outcomes in human life. Without enforcement of the rules, humans get less of what they want on average. Then it is just the result of random actions of groups of individuals rather than the concerted action of an authoritative government.

[mrswdk]

There's a snag there then, because I don't share that assumption. Personally I don't consider humanity to have any innate worth. Other beings have worth to me in that they can help me achieve things, but they and I do not, in and of ourselves, have innate worth.

...

No I don't. All I need to be able to do is to recognize that there is no innate reason why humanity should survive.

You're defining innate worth in a way such that your conclusion is tautological. But in doing so, you're just answering the wrong question. It is clearly true that without some sort of rule being applied by a higher power, there's no reason why humanity has to exist from the point of view of the universe. But here I'm not interested in answering the question of whether the existence of humanity is somehow a good thing. (There are people who discuss that, but we don't have to go all the way there.) Humans do exist, and they have desires. As long as they do, it is a good thing if they can achieve those desires. If you want a strong argument, you have to dispute that latter claim: you have to show why it doesn't matter if other people feel pain (say). Do you believe that?

It depends. It's not as simple as saying 'pain always matters' or 'pain never matters'.

To the individual, achievement of their own desires will be important, and someone preventing them from achieving those desires will be felt as bad to them. You seem to tend towards a system in which aggregate good is the objective (even if that's not really possible to properly specify). Such a system necessarily entails at least some people having their desires restrained or even deliberately denied, and the effect of the system on those people as individuals would be to have an aggregate negative effect on them. Is that not then a system which is only good to some people, and not a universally good system?