Simon Paynton

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Davis wrote:

That is not what ethics and metha ethics are “supposed” to be about.

Ethics is about something: what is it about?  Morality?  If so, then it makes sense to study morality itself.

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Unseen wrote:

If “moral facts” exist, then they are facts about morality, not facts of morality.

I think there are a number of possible categories of “moral facts”.

1. facts about morality;
2. the idea “murder is wrong” is said by some people to be a fact;
3. the fact, “if I murder someone then I am breaking the norm that says murder is wrong”.

For something to be right or wrong means that it upholds or violates a (shared) norm.

I have never seen a moral “principle” that was universal across all cultures. Murder, incest, you name it, there’s been a culture that sanctioned or at least looked the other way.

But morality doesn’t only consist of banning or promoting murder, incest, theft, lying etc.  It also consists of principles like reciprocity, empathic concern, helping, fairness, cooperation, competition, following norms etc.  Here is a study which claims to find seven universal principles.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

I may have a full version in my PDF collection so I will search for it and email it to you.

If you have a .pdf copy of the Westermarck, I would be interested to see it.

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Karuna wrote:

Point being that things which are human constructs do appear real to people & they can be very useful.

People’s moral convictions appear real to them, as if they are “true”.  I think this objectivity is an illusion.

It’s obvious that there is a common morality … But what do you have to presuppose it’s existence?

The pressure to thrive cooperatively makes our common morality in my opinion.  Together with patriarchal norms which are also part of our common morality.

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Humans only started rationalising and codifying moral systems 10,000 years ago and they only started doing so in an analytical and comprehensive way 2,500 years ago.

But actual human morality, whether or not it was rationalised and codified, must have begun around 2 million years ago when we hit the savannah and we were required to begin cooperating.  At that stage, we probably had sharing (of scavenged meat), egalitarianism and cooperative breeding.  A proto- human morality.  All of these were innovations over and above the abilities of the other great apes.

You can argue for what the most ideal moralsmoral is, as best you can.

I think it’s more instructive, and productive, to discover the morality that people actually have.  After all, ethics and metaethics are supposed to be talking about a real thing: what is that thing?

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Yes, just because the fossil record is incomplete doesn’t make it in conflict with Darwin’s theory.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

What we have at the moment is facts (biological and physical) leading to a predictable morality.  So, moral realism has a point in my opinion, in that it has its roots in reality.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I don’t know, I agree with you that there is no moral system out there in the universe waiting for us to discover it.  On the other hand, the universe sets up conditions for human beings such that they moral system we have is inevitable and predictable.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

You’re right, already the idea seems inconsistent.  “Human race” means the entire family tree.  Chimpanzees and parakeets have their own more primitive versions of morality, but the principles would be recognisable by humans.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@regthefronkeyfarmer – Westermarck

I have a paper on “Finnish philosophers” that talks about Westermarck, I’ll give it another look.  I’ve encountered him in talking about anthropology.

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Unseen wrote:

anything that’s true outside any moral system

I think the idea is, there’s an entire moral system that exists independently of the human race.  That would presumably be the idea of universal human ethics.  Universal human ethics can be shown to have evolved through cooperation with interdependence (and patriarchy), along with the notion of objectivity (the view from anywhere – in my group).

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Isn’t “moral truth” something that is “true” no matter what?  So that would make it true outside of any one moral system.  For example, some philosophers say that morality has evolved “to track moral truths”.  I think this is nonsense.  I find it strange that philosophers devote so much time to meta-ethics (studying the study of ethics) rather than the content of morality itself.

I’m intrigued by the Oxford Short Introduction to Ethics.  I’ll send you an e-mail address.

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

it’s been recognized by moral philosophers for centuries that you cannot point to any moral truth.

There are lots of philosophers who still talk about “moral truth” and “correctness” etc.  I don’t agree with them.  However, it’s interesting to consider that they have a point, in that, the roots of human morality lie in the biological/physical universe of cooperating to survive on planet Earth.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Davis wrote:

it’s simply making an objective moral claim.

It’s appealing to different norms – of kindness and human dignity.  FGM is a patriarchal norm, to do with female subjugation and sexual control by society/males.  Sometimes, norms clash, as in this case.

The point is, people who practice FGM also believe in kindness and human dignity, it’s just that they believe in patriarchy more firmly.  So we can appeal to our shared norms to appeal to those people.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

If killing babies and not killing anyone can be the result of the same “form,” what makes such a form useful for anything?

Because that form is cooperation, and it can plausibly be shown that it gives rise to a family of human moral values.

Why did the Spartans kill their own babies – or leave them on hillsides?  Because they wanted the best soldiers they could get.  They were a warlike people, who cooperated tightly together to fight against neighbouring groups.  By the sounds of it, their norms were harshly applied.

Quakers don’t want to kill anyone, and this again is a form of cooperation – with the whole world.  It’s the same thing as the Spartans were doing – cooperation – but done in a different way.  Instead of solidarity with only other Quakers, they feel solidarity with everybody.

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