Recent comments in /f/philosophy

DeepspaceDigital t1_iskwxbu wrote

Reply to Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

If you cannot change anyone else's view of morality, why is yours important? We are all free to ponder the subject, but if morality is a million different things to a million different people, I can't see why it matters. Perhaps your view of morality really is superior. If that is the case how do you implement it? Does morality have a role to play in education?

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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_iskmxlp wrote

Reply to comment by odiouscontemplater in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

Well that's one way of looking at it. But good luck having a happy life with that attitude... Even in terms of game theory, you can derive a lot of moral norms from long-term successful strategies. Ken Binmore, Martin Nowak, and Oliver Scott Curry have done a lot of research in this area.

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odiouscontemplater t1_isklwv4 wrote

Reply to Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

“Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche.

That's it, nothing more special to it.

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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_iskflks wrote

Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

My pleasure! For Churchland I would obviously recommend my own interview ;) Oliver Scott Curry has some good youtube videos, just em out.

I'd love to get Tomasello on the show but haven't asked yet. Currently, I think the easiest entry is to check out Ricardo Lopes' interviews of him. You can watch the video on Youtube or just listen to the audio in podcast style (links below). But really, if you have the patience to read Natural History of Human Morality then do! It's relatively short, but super dense. So it's good to start with an interview, anyway. But a masterpiece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt9eS0pCsgo&ab_channel=TheDissenter

​

https://anchor.fm/thedissenter/episodes/422-Michael-Tomasello-Interdependence--Shared-Intentionality--Culture--and-Morality-enmd65

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throwhooawayyfoe t1_iskcwex wrote

Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

> Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions.

Jonathan Haidt’s social psych research goes into this topic extensively. He spent the first half of his career doing giant surveys across cultures all over the world to identify the kinds of situations humans universally attach moral significance to, though the specifics of each will be modulated by local cultural norms. His list is more or less the same as yours, and he calls it “Moral Foundations Theory.” The most fascinating part to me is that while humans generally all respond somewhat to each of the foundations, the degree to which we attach significance to each one is highly correlated with how strongly we align broadly towards the liberal-left-progressive vs conservative-hierarchical-traditional political parties, religions, and lifestyles of the cultural environments we each inhabit.

I used to readily recommend his book on it “The Righteous Mind,” but it was written in the pre-Trump era, so it’s observations of how these foundations map onto political identities and how that could help us “all just get along” can come off as pretty naive and utopian now. The theory itself still appears to be largely valid, and has given me some very helpful insights in understanding the beliefs of certain kinds of people I don’t often see eye to eye with. So I’d say the book is still worth reading if you are capable of contextualizing some of the political commentary with its time.

He’s not an evolutionary biologist and generally steers clear of specifically diving into statements about that side of it, other than to point to the standard materialist interpretation of all behavior ie: something this universally observed must be at least in part a product of natural selection, with the relevant genetic correlates. It’s also important to note that this would not require any sort of “group level selection” theory to explain, individual- or gene-level explanations have no problem with it either.

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Bookswinters t1_isk88db wrote

Reply to comment by Ma3Ke4Li3 in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

I haven't heard of any of these folks! I'm looking into them right now, thank you for the recommendations!!

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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_isk6vrv wrote

Reply to comment by Daotar in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

Yea it's a great book! My other favourite is Tomasello's Natural History of Human Morality, take a look ;)

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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_isk6ifg wrote

Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

I appreciate this take a lot! I actually have an episode with Patricia Churchland exploring this exact topic! I think she focuses to much on caring and altruism at the expense of the kinds of issues that you mentioned. But still very relevant.

https://on-humans.podcastpage.io/episode/1-origins-of-our-warm-blooded-morality-patricia-churchland

Also, do you know of the work of Oliver Scott Curry? his work is very relevant to your take. For him, morality is all about cooperation (non-zero-sum games). I would press against this extreme, too, and say that care and altruistic concern for others plays a role, too. But anyway, both are interesting scholars.

The best scholar who roots the evolution of morality to both care and sympathy (altruism), as well as mutualism and interdependence (cooperation), is Michael Tomasello. The Natural History of Human Morality is a masterpiece!

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Daotar t1_isk3nh9 wrote

Reply to Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

I love Kitcher’s Ethical Project! Easily one of the best accounts of evolutionary ethics out there along with Joyce’s The Evolution of Morality.

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Bookswinters t1_isjxtba wrote

Reply to Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

I think I generally agree. I would emphasize the genetic predisposition to morality likely predates homo sapiens as a species.

Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions. I would argue this is largely genetic and forms a basis of an "intrinsic" morality. Humans are born "primed" to accept hierarchy and sacredness as concepts, but it's up to the society to define the specifics. These moral concepts are fairly universal, and it's easy to imagine why such traits would be selected for in a social species.

As we have become more sophisticated we can describe an "aspirational" morality somewhat more seperated from genetics and intrinsic human nature. Usually these place lesser emphasis on sacredness and hierarchy and more emphasis on fairness and harm reduction. Most secular humanist morality models such as Sam Harris' moral landscape fit this "aspirational" morality category, but the ideal person described by various religious teachers could be placed here as well.

Edit: spelling

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