Philosophy Discussion Forums

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2023, 5:31 am

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2023, 4:43 am We are bound by our natural moral sentiments. We cannot help it.

First, is it our own moral "sentiments" that you think we are bound by, or our society's ? You've suggested that they could be different.

Second, if we agree that these moral sentiments evolved, how does that fact make them morally binding ?

If your moral sense tells you that murder is wrong, but your reason tells you that this moral sense is nothing but a hardwired mechanism to promote species survival, why should you not over-ride it when species survival is not at stake ? Why not bump off your granny ?

Our moral sentiments are binding (in most cases) because they are so strongly felt. You don't eat things you think taste awful and you don't do things you feel are abhorrent/awful/immoral. Most people think that murder is awful and wrong. And because most of us think it is awful/morally wrong we have made laws against it and punish murderers. This all stems from our moral sentiments not from our laws. After all, if 99% of people thought murder was ok do you think we would have laws against it? We are bound by our own moral sentiments which are then supported by our laws.

Our abhorrence of murder is part of our core morality. For our core morality to be different, and perhaps to have morality at all, our evolutionary history would need to have been different. Only in very extenuating circumstances could our abhorrence of murder be overridden. If you think that if you were to believe in the evolutionary basis of morality, you might go bump off granny, then I'd advise granny (and everyone else) to steer well clear of you. I have long believed in the evolutionary basis of human morality and yet loved my Granny to bits. She was in absolutely no danger from me, her evolution believing grandson. Indeed, I would have protected her at grave risk to my own life. Love and respect for our elderly is also part of core human morality which is why it is pretty much universal across all societies.

It is clear to me that some people are very uncomfortable with the idea that our morals are based in nothing but our sentiments. They want our moral values to be based in something more solidly real. I would therefore like to ask moral realists what they mean by "real".

I would be surprised if they mean "objectively real” like rocks and trees and carrots. Moral values are obviously not real in that sense.

However, there are many human conventions that are agreed upon and made real by virtue of our agreement. We agree that certain bits of paper with pictures and numbers printed thereon are worth a certain amount in economic terms. But the value of money is contingent and not real in the same way as rocks are real. And money can fall in value. If we want to argue that moral values are real in the way that conventions such as money, companies, contracts and laws are real, it would mean that moral values are also contingent, mind-dependent realities which are real only insofar as we agree to recognize them for utilitarian purposes. But this does not seem right to me, and moral realists generally want something more than this as a basis for morality.

Some argue that moral values could be real in the way that mathematical truths are real. I am not a mathematician but I know that we have proofs in mathematics that cannot be disputed in the way morality can be. There don’t seem to be any such proofs when it comes to morality. I cannot prove objectively with numbers or with logic that stealing or lying or murder are morally wrong. So morality does not seem to be like mathematics either, because moral assertions can be questioned and moral values can change in a way that 5+7=12 cannot be reasonably questioned or changed. People can reasonably disagree about particular moral values but they cannot reasonably disagree about arithmetic. Therefore, I don’t think moral values can be real in the way mathematical truths are real. So where does this leave us?

It has been by thinking about all this that I have come to agree with Hume who says that morality is based in our sentiments. Hume says:

In these sentiments then, not in a discovery of relations of any kind, do all moral determinations consist. . . .… we must at last acknowledge, that the crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation, which can be the object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery.

I feel that it is here, with our sentiments, that we get to some sort of bedrock. Our feelings, our sentiments seem to be about as real and as important to us as anything non-physical can be. If we think Hume may be right then we might want to ask where our moral sentiments came from. Perhaps answering this question could tell us something important about the sort of reality our moral values can have.

It's common in today's society to value feeling over thinking.

Your account of human decision-making seems to be that we necessarily act on whatever feeling is strongest at any particular moment. With thinking playing no role at all. Moral philosophy, in your world, is simply a matter of introspection to see which feeling is strongest.

So if one day you feel that your love and affection for your Granny is less strong than your desire to inherit her money straight away, then you reach for a murder weapon. And there is nothing conceivably wrong with that. Because morality is no more than a feeling, which you're happy to describe as "strong" or "deep" as long as you feel it to be so.

Is that what you're saying?

In which case, why believe Hume ? All he was doing was expressing his feelings. How can his feelings be more true than anyone else's ? Did they not evolve ? You seem to have no basis for preferring one feeling over another...

On your other point, my analogy was not with arithmetic but with colour vision. Where we evolve the capability of perceiving something real.

But that perception is fallible. It may be that in a particular light something seems yellow. So there is a role for thinking, for understanding of optics, for comparison with how other objects appear in the same light, so as to determine what colour it really is. Which is a meaningful question. Despite the fact that you and I may not agree where green ends and blue begins.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 am It's common in today's society to value feeling over thinking.

Your account of human decision-making seems to be that we necessarily act on whatever feeling is strongest at any particular moment. With thinking playing no role at all. Moral philosophy, in your world, is simply a matter of introspection to see which feeling is strongest.

So if one day you feel that your love and affection for your Granny is less strong than your desire to inherit her money straight away, then you reach for a murder weapon. And there is nothing conceivably wrong with that. Because morality is no more than a feeling, which you're happy to describe as "strong" or "deep" as long as you feel it to be so.

Is that what you're saying?

In which case, why believe Hume ? All he was doing was expressing his feelings. How can his feelings be more true than anyone else's ? Did they not evolve ? You seem to have no basis for preferring one feeling over another...

On your other point, my analogy was not with arithmetic but with colour vision. Where we evolve the capability of perceiving something real.

But that perception is fallible. It may be that in a particular light something seems yellow. So there is a role for thinking, for understanding of optics, for comparison with how other objects appear in the same light, so as to determine what colour it really is. Which is a meaningful question. Despite the fact that you and I may not agree where green ends and blue begins.

Circumstances alter morals. If your Granny is terminally ill at the end of her life and pleading with you to delver her from her intractable suffering you would do good to kill Granny.

The politics of voluntary euthanasia or doctor- assisted dying are best when emotions are governed by reason.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 am It's common in today's society to value feeling over thinking.

Your account of human decision-making seems to be that we necessarily act on whatever feeling is strongest at any particular moment. With thinking playing no role at all. Moral philosophy, in your world, is simply a matter of introspection to see which feeling is strongest.

So, if you do not act on your feelings, how do you make decisions about the right or wrong thing to do? To most people, murder is abhorrent – we don’t need to think about this, we feel it, and it is hard to imagine a situation in which we would kill someone. In war, as self-preservation, kill or be killed… Yes, in such extreme circumstances our abhorrence of killing is overcome by the urge for self-preservation. (Another feeling) In extreme situations, do we need to sit down and think much about it? Or do we feel it?

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 amSo if one day you feel that your love and affection for your Granny is less strong than your desire to inherit her money straight away, then you reach for a murder weapon. And there is nothing conceivably wrong with that. Because morality is no more than a feeling, which you're happy to describe as "strong" or "deep" as long as you feel it to be so.

Is that what you're saying?

No that is not what I am saying. My feeling of love for Gran and my ingrained abhorrence of murder would always override any thought of getting her money. Most of us would not need to think about this. Wouldn’t want to think about it. Would you?

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 amIn which case, why believe Hume ? All he was doing was expressing his feelings. How can his feelings be more true than anyone else's ? Did they not evolve ? You seem to have no basis for preferring one feeling over another...

This is a non sequitur. Hume was telling us what he sees as the basis for moral decision making and not about his own moral sentiments.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 amOn your other point, my analogy was not with arithmetic but with colour vision. Where we evolve the capability of perceiving something real.

It is a mistake to equate colour vision and moral sentiments. They evolved for different purposes.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 amBut that perception is fallible. It may be that in a particular light something seems yellow. So there is a role for thinking, for understanding of optics, for comparison with how other objects appear in the same light, so as to determine what colour it really is. Which is a meaningful question. Despite the fact that you and I may not agree where green ends and blue begins.

I’m at a loss to see the relevance of this to our moral sentiments.
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Belindi wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 9:09 am

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 5:53 am It's common in today's society to value feeling over thinking.

Your account of human decision-making seems to be that we necessarily act on whatever feeling is strongest at any particular moment. With thinking playing no role at all. Moral philosophy, in your world, is simply a matter of introspection to see which feeling is strongest.

So if one day you feel that your love and affection for your Granny is less strong than your desire to inherit her money straight away, then you reach for a murder weapon. And there is nothing conceivably wrong with that. Because morality is no more than a feeling, which you're happy to describe as "strong" or "deep" as long as you feel it to be so.

Is that what you're saying?

In which case, why believe Hume ? All he was doing was expressing his feelings. How can his feelings be more true than anyone else's ? Did they not evolve ? You seem to have no basis for preferring one feeling over another...

On your other point, my analogy was not with arithmetic but with colour vision. Where we evolve the capability of perceiving something real.

But that perception is fallible. It may be that in a particular light something seems yellow. So there is a role for thinking, for understanding of optics, for comparison with how other objects appear in the same light, so as to determine what colour it really is. Which is a meaningful question. Despite the fact that you and I may not agree where green ends and blue begins.

Circumstances alter morals. If your Granny is terminally ill at the end of her life and pleading with you to delver her from her intractable suffering you would do good to kill Granny.

The politics of voluntary euthanasia or doctor- assisted dying are best when emotions are governed by reason.

Agreed. Circumstance and context are critical - and are too often ignored due to repeated exposure to sensationalist media, who routinely avoid nuance to pump up stories.

So an old person doing the wishes of their dying partner by ending their pain is said to have performed "murder". Also, the word "murder" has been misused by the anti-abortion lobby, equating the death of a mindless foetus with the death of functioning humans with interests, loves and aptitudes.

As far as I can see, our moral sentiments are deep seated but they are not unassailable and they can sometimes conflict. For example, I have deep seated feelings about killing others and this would almost always guide my actions. This means that if my wife of 60 years was in the late stage of a terminal illness, and in agony and begging me to stop her suffering, and if the only way to do that was to place a bottle of phenobarbital and a glass of water on her bedside table, then I would be highly conflicted. Would I do it? It's hard to say whether my love for her and my urge to relieve her suffering would overpower my inborn sense of the wrongness of killing. I can't say whether her suffering would not eventually get the better of me, especially if it were to be prolonged.

Our inborn moral sentiments evolved to help launch our genes into the future. Evolution, being blind, could not foresee or care about the subtleties that might be involved when one moral value, the aversions to murder, conflicts with other sentiments, love, empathy and mercy. So it is in such situations that we would need to think hard about what to do for the best. There is no moral-o-meter against which we can objectively measure the rightness or wrongness of an action. And there is no mysterious oracular realm to which we have epistemic access that can give us answers. All we have are our evolved moral sentiments that have been refined by cultural influences such as teaching, religion, advice from others and our knowledge of the law. That is all we have. Our morality is entirely human and we must deal with its sometimes conflicting demands as best we can. It's part of what being human means.

It occurred to me that the above may come across as preachy or a bit dogmatic.
I am always open to arguments by moral realists as to how they would ground morality if not in our moral sentiments as I do.

The real question posed by this thread is the question of the basis of our ethical values. That is a metaethical question. It is not a question for normative ethics or practical ethics. So we wouldn't be discussing consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism or deontological theories such as Kant's categorical imperative. They are normative theories. Metaethics focusses on what morality is, what we are doing when we moralize and where our morality springs from. For me, ethics starts with our evolved moral sentiments. I'm hoping others will post about where they think our morals come from.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑December 4th, 2023, 10:37 pm All we have are our evolved moral sentiments that have been refined by cultural influences such as teaching, religion, advice from others and our knowledge of the law. That is all we have. Our morality is entirely human and we must deal with its sometimes conflicting demands as best we can.

Sentiment is not all we have. We have reason and intuition and empathy.

I think you're half-right. Right to reject religious revelation as the basis of morality. Right to recognise that moral imperatives can conflict. But wrong to reduce human mental activity to feeling. (Or to consider the other elements of mental activity as unimportant bits that are somehow all wrapped up in your notion of "deal with").

In my working account of morality, we reach moral conclusions by a process of moral reasoning. But any reasoning comes up against the Is-Ought problem. What are the moral axioms that we reason from, that introduce an Ought into our thinking ?

I would say that what we reason from are moral intuitions. (Which are possibly what you describe as "sentiments"). But that unlike classical logic which takes axioms as being certainly true, our intuitions are fallible.

By applying Kant's test - can I will that it be a universal rule that everyone should behave in this way ? - we can reason that our intuition is deficient or lacking in some respect.

Thanks for your response Good_Egg.

I agree that our deep-seated moral sentiments are not all we have. For one thing, as I mentioned above, they are usually refined in lots of ways - by teaching by parents, learning at school, advice from friends and family, by cultural influences such as religion, knowledge of the law, etcetera.

I think by “moral intuition" you mean more or less the same as I mean when I refer to our (mostly) evolved “moral sentiments”.
You mentioned empathy, another sentiment or feeling, which I think also has origins deep in our evolutionary history. Evidence for this is that we see empathy as well as “proto-morality” in other animals, too.

I'm glad you brought up the is/ought problem. As far as I know it was Hume who first dealt with it effectively, so I’ll quote him at length,

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author
proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes
observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the
usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with
an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the [utmost] consequence.
For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should
be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seem
s altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely
different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend
it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems
of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the
relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

In short, what Hume is saying here is that you can’t get ought from is. And he is right.

“Ought” is a very interesting word which most of us don’t really feel the need to analyse because we think it’s meaning is obvious. But I think it needs analysing. And I think that once we do analyse it, we may see that it is a word that gets to the heart of what we are doing when we moralize. So I’m going to try to get clear on what “ought” actually means.

What does it mean when someone makes a moral assertion using the word “ought”? Let’s say, for example, that Joe says to Bob,

"You really ought to do X."

To my mind, the only thing “ought” can mean here is that if Bob doesn't do X, Joe, someone else, or perhaps Bob himself, is going to feel bad about it. Similarly, if someone tells Mary,

"It's morally right to do Y",

it must mean that the speaker, or someone else, will approve of Mary doing Y and disapprove if she doesn’t do Y.

If this is right, then it makes morality subjective, that is, based in our subjective sentiments, in our feelings. There’s bad feeling when people don’t do what they, or others, think they are morally bound to do. Our feelings are real enough, and very important - we could hardly operate as a cooperative species without them. But they are subjective and not objective.

If moral assertions are indeed based in our subjective sentiments, in our feelings, as Hume says, then they cannot be assessed as being true or false because they are value judgements. There is no moral-o-meter against which we measure whether a moral assertion in objectively true or false. Moral claims are not truth apt, and they cannot be so because they are based in human feelings which, whilst real, are not the sort of things that can be true or false. Moral sentiments are a bit like aesthetic sentiments in this way – it is not possible to prove objectively that someone is wrong to like a particular work of art or to loath another. Aesthetic feelings are not the type of thing that can be true or false. I think moral values are like that. But that does not mean our moral sentiments are unimportant, arbitrary or disposable, as I’ll explain below.

What is does mean is that, if we discount Divine Command theory, and the idea that our moral feelings track some spooky ideal moral truth (epistemic access to which moral realists cannot explain) then it’s hard to see that one is left with any basis from which to argue for moral realism. But this is not as bad as it might at first seem.

It doesn’t mean that our moral sentiments are not real, that one person’s judgment is as good as another’s or that we are wrong to think that torturing babies for fun is despicable behaviour that should be punished. The fact is that while there can be some disagreement about details (about clothing for example) human moral sentiments are remarkably consistent across pretty much all cultures. Murder, incest, rape, theft, double-dealing, breaking promises, etcetera are all almost universally condemned whilst care for the young, the sick, the elderly, fairness, justice, keeping promises, giving to the poor, etcetera are all almost universally approved of. Why should this be so?

This brings us back to evolution. Can you imagine human societies being able to function if most people did not have strong feelings about torturing babies for fun, or about murder, incest, rape, theft, double-dealing, breaking promises, or about care for the young, the sick, the elderly, fairness, justice, keeping promises, giving to the poor, etcetera. Can you imagine that we’d have gotten through the Pleistocene without feelings about these behaviours. We had to be able to stick together harmoniously in small groups. Can you imagine how difficult it would be if we’d had to think, intellectualize about every singe act, do some sort of calculation, conduct surveys before we did anything. We didn’t need to do any of this because our deep-seated feelings provided quick and easy guidance (in most cases) and even today, we all generally do what our conspecifics will approve of and avoid doing what is going to cause ill feeling towards ourselves or generally cause trouble. We do all this pretty much without thinking. We just feel it right, morally right, to act in certain ways and not others. Evolution instilled these feelings in us because it worked better if we didn’t have to intellectualize about every act and it ensured that most of us acted in ways that fostered cooperation and not conflict within our group.

The fact is that we still rely heavily on our moral feelings that were instilled in us by evolution. They got us through the Pleistocene and they are as useful, indeed, necessary today as they were back then. They are so embedded in out psyches that, for the most part, we cannot jettison them or change them. And we wouldn’t want to. That’s how good a job evolution did. Not perfect. But good enough for the job at hand.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑December 5th, 2023, 1:41 am The real question posed by this thread is the question of the basis of our ethical values. That is a metaethical question. It is not a question for normative ethics or practical ethics. So we wouldn't be discussing consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism or deontological theories such as Kant's categorical imperative. They are normative theories. Metaethics focusses on what morality is, what we are doing when we moralize and where our morality springs from. For me, ethics starts with our evolved moral sentiments. I'm hoping others will post about where they think our morals come from.

Our morals come from the moral cultures that have been transmitted to us as individuals by others who are significant to us as individuals. All societies' need for their moral code comes from individuals' need to cooperate. Moral ability varies in a similar way to reasoning ability.
Moral ability is related to ordinary human sympathy.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 5th, 2023, 5:04 am By applying Kant's test - can I will that it be a universal rule that everyone should behave in this way ? - we can reason that our intuition is deficient or lacking in some respect.

Kant's test, his Categorical Imperative, is basically an elaboration of the Golden Rule. But much harder to understand than the folk version. And extremely cumbersome out in the wild, whether it be on the savanna or on the streets of Manhattan, and where we often don't have an armchair or time to philosophize. Much quicker to go with what we know, with what feels right, which for most of us, in most circumstances, will be about right. Nature gave us our innate moral sentiments so that, in most cases, the way forward is clear and we can get on with mundane, but important, stuff like finding dinner.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑December 5th, 2023, 11:02 am

Good_Egg wrote: ↑December 5th, 2023, 5:04 am By applying Kant's test - can I will that it be a universal rule that everyone should behave in this way ? - we can reason that our intuition is deficient or lacking in some respect.

Kant's test, his Categorical Imperative, is basically an elaboration of the Golden Rule. But much harder to understand than the folk version. And extremely cumbersome out in the wild, whether it be on the savanna or on the streets of Manhattan, and where we often don't have an armchair or time to philosophize. Much quicker to go with what we know, with what feels right, which for most of us, in most circumstances, will be about right. Nature gave us our innate moral sentiments so that, in most cases, the way forward is clear and we can get on with mundane, but important, stuff like finding dinner.

By "nature" I supposed you mean the human genome as opposed to human cultures. Cultures of belief and practise evolve not genetically but by example and most of all by language . Kohlberg has a respectable theory of how individuals learn morality i.e. there are stages in the learning of morality through which each stage progresses from the stage before it, and these stages usually but not always coincide with the child's age.I will see if I can find it for you there's plenty on the Web.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html



It's impossible to define human morality , because we are not genetically stable. I mean genetically stable for long periods. It is easy to define a good canine or a good beef cow because nature or purposive breeding has established well used criteria.

Thanks for the link, Belindi

Yes, it's easy to define a good beef cow.
And if we're talking about morality, I think it's easy to define good human. A good human is one who doesn't do bad stuff. Now, define bad. Ok, now we're back at moral sentiments. Bad is what most of us think it is. Murder, rape, etcectera. Most of us abhor these acts and those who do such things we call bad. There's nothing hard, much less impossible, about that.