What is morality

Author: keithprosser

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#61
3RU7AL
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@Plisken
Do you see the word "unjustified" in that process being conflated with murder?  The point is that there is not an inherent reason to justify the killing, in order for the legislature, and the court to not have sufficient proof that it's justified in throwing you in the slammer.  Justification is a process.
You lost me.

Are you trying to argue that all instances of humans killing humans intentionally are automatically justified (the soldier example)?

Or are you trying to argue that all instances of humans killing humans intentionally are automatically murder unless and until some justification process determines otherwise?
#62
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@3RU7AL
The arguement states that there is no inherent reason to justify.  Murder is unjustifiable, and so naturally it will not be justified, but it's not contingent upon our justification.

#63
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@Plisken
The arguement states that there is no inherent reason to justify.  Murder is unjustifiable, and so naturally it will not be justified, but it's not contingent upon justification.
How do you propose we (as non-participants) determine if a human intentionally killing another human is murder or not?

#64
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@3RU7AL
Prove guilt for lethal force in the parties responsible.  If you rob a bank, and someone gets killed in the process, their death is on your hands.  

#65
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@Plisken
Imagine for a moment we live in a community of about 200 people, isolated on an island, two years after a plane crash.

How do you propose we (as non-participants) determine if a human intentionally killing another human is murder or not?
#66
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@3RU7AL
Well, who are the involved parties, and who is responsible?  Someone is probably responsible for the intentional killing.  The blood is on them.  
#67
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@Plisken
Well, who are the involved parties, and who is responsible?
A man (alive) says "Oh, that guy was a jerk!  He tried to kill me when we were hunting and so I killed him first."

The (dead) body of a man is then discovered in the jungle.

The (dead) body appears to have been stabbed in the chest.
#68
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@3RU7AL
I see no way of proving which party escalated to the use of lethal force here, so there is no way to prove that anyone is responsible for the homicide.  You shouldn't intend to kill the guy though being the defender, so that's a really poor choice of wording for using lethal force with purportionality.
#69
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@Plisken
I see no way of proving which party escalated to the use of lethal force here, so there is no way to prove that anyone is responsible for the homicide.  You shouldn't intend to kill someone in simple self defense though.
So, "not murder" then?

I mean, I guess "innocent until proven guilty" seems like it might apply?
#70
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@3RU7AL
You know I could probably say that based on the marginal evidence we have available, there is some proof that the dead guy is responsible for the homicide.  I don't think we need to call that murder.  

Yes, of course, innocent until proven guilty.  There is absolutely no proof of murder here.

#71
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@keithprosser
People must be making a judgement or estimate of something to determine where they place it on the morality scale - what I want to examine/uncover is what it is we are estimating when make a moral judgement.
The only person of most significant concern is the pregnant woman.

The father may come in 2nd but my guess is that historically the father is often not nearly as concerned or considerate of the results of his actions, and if allowed to have a say to the pregnant women in historical cases, would vote for abortion more often than not.

Of course nobody knows. We only know the history of whether how many fathers stuck around.

Or if we are men and have been in or close to those set of circumstances  ---at 17 years of age-- how did we feel then.

I know  my intentions, her intentions and my vote --if I never impregnated a woman-- in regards to my specific set of circumstances.

Humana/humanity is stupid in these regards and of course many others.

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#72
keithprosser
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@drafterman
I think the issue here is you're treating it as a quantifiable and discrete measure of something. It's more like health or humor we can say something is healthier than something else or something is funnier than something else but they're not discrete measurements of anything.
I have to dispute that.  I think 'healthier' or 'funnier' are measurements of something - it is however not easy to pin down in a simple phrase what it is that 'health' or 'funniness' measure or consists of. 

Weird scenarios aside, an Olympic athlete is healthier than a cancer patient but describing the basis of that ranking is a lot harder than making that ranking in thr first place.  The Simpsons is funnier than Hamlet, but while we can make that judgement in milliseconds it would take a long time to say exactly why the Simpsons is funny and Hamlet isn't.

Why is giving to charity more moral the murder?  It's 'obvious', right?  Just as its obvious to that the Simpsons is funnier than Hamlet.   But what 'obvious' means is that we use instinct rather than reason to make the call.  I want to get beyond the instinct to what that instinct is being triggered by.
 

 
#73
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@keithprosser
A combination of being told what is more or less moral than other things with a projection of our own sense of what we would rather have done to us. Would you rather someone steal your wallet or slit your throat?
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#74
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@drafterman
i like what i think you're saying;  that morality (or rather immorality) of something is roughly proportional to the harm it causes.... so the morality of something is related to the good is does.  That seems like a tautology, but one can think of ways to quantify 'harm' (reduced life expectancy,  pain induced etc).  Harm and benefit are not completely arbitratry.

Morality then is a way to express an estimate of the harm/benefit of something...

Bear with me.... I'm not pushing an agenda; i am genuinely trying to get a handle on what it is we end up debating so endlessly!

#75
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@keithprosser
The debate isn't because morality isn't well defined, it's because it's subjective and relative when so many people insist that it is objective and absolute.
#76
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@keithprosser
i like what i think you're saying;  that morality (or rather immorality) of something is roughly proportional to the harm it causes.... so the morality of something is related to the good is does.  That seems like a tautology, but one can think of ways to quantify 'harm' (reduced life expectancy,  pain induced etc).  Harm and benefit are not completely arbitratry.
You're on the wrong track.

Murder causes more harm than rape, right?

If that is the case, why is it waaaaaaaaaaaaay more acceptable to show non-stop murders nearly 24 hours a day on television and in movies and comparatively almost no rape?

There is clearly some factor other than a simple measure of "harm" at play here.

You also seem to be ignoring historical and cultural norms.
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#77
keithprosser
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@3RU7AL
I'm not ignoring anything.... if historical and cultural norms play a role in morality then let's examine how exactly that works.   it seems 90% of 'debates' are down to disgreements about what words mean.  I have my own ideas but I'm open to other ideas too.

Re the relative harm of rape and murder, it is not immediately obvious which is more harmful and/hence it is not immediately obvious which is worse morally.  My developing idea is that brains have a circuit that make a 'ballpark' estimate of the harm/benefit of stuff.  That circuit evolved because it helped to modify behaviour in ways advantagous to the individual and species.     
#78
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@keithprosser
it is not immediately obvious which is more harmful
Really?

Would you rather be raped or murdered?

Maybe we should take a poll?
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#79
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@3RU7AL
Are you suggesting it would be unanimous?

You don't seem to get what I'm thinking about.   I think maybe morality does not exist - there are only moral judgements.   Our brains have evolved to un/subconsciously estimate the harm/benefit of something heuristically; that estimate is then passed to consciousness where it is experienced as the morality of that something.  That is an efficient system because it avoids actual thought - we don't have to think about whether murder is good or bad; we have neural hardware to do that.  

That frees up the thinking parts of the brain for other tasks, which is good.   But it means we only estimate the objective harm/benefit of stuff via a subjective sensation (we call it morality) derived from a neural net in our heads.  
#80
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@keithprosser
Are you suggesting it would be unanimous?
I'm going to hazard 90+% (not excluding suicidal individuals) not choosing murder.

You don't seem to get what I'm thinking about.   I think maybe morality does not exist - there are only moral judgements.   Our brains have evolved to un/subconsciously estimate the harm/benefit of something heuristically; that estimate is then passed to consciousness where it is experienced as the morality of that something.  That is an efficient system because it avoids actual thought - we don't have to think about whether murder is good or bad; we have neural hardware to do that.   

That frees up the thinking parts of the brain for other tasks, which is good.   But it means we only estimate the objective harm/benefit of stuff via a subjective sensation (we call it morality) derived from a neural net in our heads.   
Well that sounds much more reasonable than, "every moral action is assigned a number value, like wavelengths of light".
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#81
keithprosser
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There is a possibly useful parallel.   When we look at differently coloured objects we don't perceive the difference as a difference in [objective] wavelength; we perceive it as a difference in [subjective] colour.   We see the differnce in colour innately; we have to discover that wavelength is involved.

Similarly [i am suggesting]  that [most normal] people innately perceive a [subjective] differnce in the morality of murder and giving to charity - this thread has moved towards suggesting that morality is to colour what wavelength is to harm/benefit.

#82
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@3RU7AL
Well we clearly recognize that some actions are more immoral than others. Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil. So when you consider that there are "shades" of immorality, it's just a matter of having a ranked difference versus a number difference with wavelengths of light. 
#83
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If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.
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#84
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@Fallaneze
Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil.
But what is about raping someone that makes it worse than lying about stealing a pencil?  Of course I'm not denying that "it's obvious" but philosophy - if it anything at all - is all about deconstructing the 'obvious'.

To quote Betrand Russell, "the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it”




#85
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@keithprosser
To put it simply, because there are differences in the amount of harm that is caused. Rape causes more harm than lying about stealing a pencil does. "Harm" is a hugely ambiguous word. It could include physical and mental suffering, financial damages, etc. Theoretically, someone who is seriously mentally ill may even be more psychologically damaged by having their favorite pencil stolen and lied to about it than if they were raped. Would this  overreaction suddenly make it more immoral for someone to have stolen their pencil and lie about it? No, unless they were aware this particular individual's excessive psychological reaction would occur. If they were aware, their action was indeed more immoral than if they weren't aware. This is why not only "harm" (I prefer referring to it as pure love gained or lost) but our level of awareness of how the act would affect others factors into how immoral it was.

#86
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@Fallaneze
Well we clearly recognize that some actions are more immoral than others. Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil. So when you consider that there are "shades" of immorality, it's just a matter of having a ranked difference versus a number difference with wavelengths of light. 
You're still losing sight of the fundamental problem.

If someone stole your pencil I would not care at all.

If someone stole my pencil I would be absolutely filled to the flipping brim with moral outrage.
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#87
keithprosser
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@Fallaneze
If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.
I don't think the brain would evolve a neural circuit that tries to quantify 'pure love gained or lost' - I prefer to say estimates harm/benefit as seen from the Darwinian perspective.

#88
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@Fallaneze
If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.
I can't even quantify how much love you currently have or how much you gained or lost from yesterday.

I'm pretty sure this is a fools errand.

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#89
keithprosser
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@3RU7AL

If someone stole your pencil I would not care at all.

If someone stole my pencil I would be absolutely filled to the flipping brim with moral outrage.

Refreshingy honest, 3RU!  How do you feel about you stealing Fallaneze's pencil?  :)

#90
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@keithprosser
Consider a variety of situations where people act immorally. Can you think of any exceptions to the theory that morality is based on harm/benefit to Darwinian fitness? Can you think of any exceptions the theory that morality is based on the amount of pure love gained or lost relative to our awareness of how our thoughts and actions are affecting other living things?