Simon Paynton

jakelafort wrote:
On a hunch Simon will regard this experiment as relevant to his ideas about morality as they relate to evolution. Either way it is interesting.

https://www.jpost.com/science/science-around-the-world/article-834805

That is interesting.  The little ants can solve a collective lifting/navigation problem better than humans.  They a…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
I disagree. One can go from happiness to being distraught in a millisecond, without the state of things changing at all.

Maybe you can call it a mood.

_Robert_ wrote:
Yeah, and this is also why some say we need a god…watching, looking, keeping score.

We’re all monitored and evaluated the entire time, by ourselves and everybody who knows us.  There’s a big eye watching us all the time, and it’s called the human race.

_Robert_ wrote:
however for those who only make good choices for recognition or some other form of payback you might say the ends justify the means. It is still weak morality, IMHO.

Some people say that something good done for its own sake is the only kind of real virtue.

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think the task is to come up with alternatives to utilitarianism, consequentialism etc., which are an intuitive way in but don’t actually really go anywhere in the real world. A good alternative is morality as collaboration – both what happens within the collaboration, and its goal, are subjects for morality.

What is nee…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
…We need emotions and consequences to govern us morally. Rationality can guide us up some weird paths……

I would suggest the converse of that is true.

All three together is ideal.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The Categorical Imperative could be considered a foundational principle of morality. It is grounded in the belief that moral actions must be guided by rationality and universalizable principles, rather than emotions or consequences. I don’t really see what it wrong with that.

That sounds good, but there’s a lot w…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Group Selection: Groups with cooperative, moral members tend to survive and thrive better, promoting the evolution of moral behavior.

Ethical Frameworks: Philosophical doctrines like Kant’s categorical imperative or utilitarianism guide moral actions through reasoned principles.

These are flat-out wrong.  Beyond th…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Below are some key motivators:

OK.  It has the stock answers down pat (kind of), but there’s nothing new or creative there.  It reads like a machine.

Can you try asking ChatGPT, what motivates people’s sense of responsibility to comply with moral norms and to behave in a moral fashion.

jakelafort wrote:
“Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid posted on X on Saturday.

This is the latest move taken by the group in its repression of women since the U.S. and its allies pulled out of Afghanistan in February 2020.

The Tal…

[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
BTW, if you bring up the song’s lyrics, there are fifteen references to men or boys and not one to females.

However, the writer of the lyrics has recently said that it’s not a gay anthem.  He gets annoyed when people say it is.

Unseen wrote:
We do not live in a world where the average person is a philosopher who acts rationally without prejudice based on information.

That’s true, it must be a visceral decision at the end of the day for pregnant mothers.  But in wider society, on both sides, people take philosophical positions.

Unseen wrote:
However, the disagreements over abortion are not disagreements over facts.  They are conflicts over attitudes or matters of opinion or definition.

What is the highest good or goal on each side?

Pro-life people say that “life” is sacrosanct no matter what.  Pro-choice people take a longer-term approach and think about the lifetime o…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
How a young Dutch woman’s life began when she was allowed to die.

I don’t think that assisted dying on the grounds of depression should be legal, because depression is always in theory reversible.  On the other hand, it took being genuinely offered to die for this lady to want to live again.  It’s a difficult one.

Unseen wrote:
It’s often “framed” by people who aren’t facing the question and the woman facing the choice has already set aside “greater good for the child” question.

We don’t know how the individual women see it.  It must be pretty subjective.  As men, we never will understand it directly.

It can be argued that it’s very important soc…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
It gets more complicated when the acts are individual (like whether to get an abortion) rather than social.

But the abortion question is framed as the greater good for the child – on either side.