Morality is a dicey, confusing subject. I can't really explain where it all comes from and why I feel certains things are so wrong and whatnot. But I don't think it's correct for religious people to claim to have more clear morals with an obvious, definite source.

As asked in the Euthyphro Dilemma, is what is what God deems moral mandated by him because it is moral, or is it only moral because it is mandated by God? One or the other must be true, if you are to believe in, for instance, the Christian god. If the former is true, then God is simply a messenger bearing news of some higher morality that even he is subject to, so morality does not come from God, and its source continues to be completely unknown. Not only that, but then God is no longer omnipotent. If the latter is the case, then our morality is essentially meaningless, because it's based on the arbitrary whim of God. If he so desired, he could change morality tomorrow, making charity immoral and beating children to death virtuous.

Now this dilemma by no means answers our questions about morality, but it does knock religious people down to the same level of moral confusion as atheists are supposed to be on. It demands an intellectual honesty about morality. Evolution has definitely played a part in morality, I feel, but who knows if there's more to it? Not I, and though they pretend to, not theists.

Does anyone think it is actually good to throw two million people into gas chambers? I think pretty much everybody (the aberration of severe psychological impairment excluded) would answer no. It is obvious why people feel this way. This type of behavior is counter productive to a safe and healthy society. Living within a safe and healthy scoiety is something that is necessary for our species.

If you will notice, when acts such as the holocaust happen, we do not see them being commited due to an understanding that it is good to throw people into gas chambers. If this were the case, then that segment of humanity would quickly drive themselves extinct by gassing each other. 

What we do see is that these acts require justifications which serve to explain why this act that is naturally considered abhorant is, in a particular circumstance, actually good. In contrast, you never see anyone justifying saving an infant from a burning building or helping those involved in a natural disaster. We naturally consider these acts good and thus they require no justification. Justifications are reserved strictly for explaining why one is behaving, or desires to behave, in a non-natural way.This seems to serve as evidence that human moralitry is not so diverse as it might at first appear.

When we consider this it seems to me that, despite what may at first glance appear to be a highly varied sense of morality existing amongst different human societies, what we actually see it that humans have a fairly consistent natural, evolutionarily calibrated, moral compass. 

Of course from here we need to look at individual cases and consider the circumstances of particular events to see of what appears bad in some cases may not actually be good or vice versa, but no matter how we decide on any given circumstance our base differentiation between good and bad acts, in the broad categorical sense, seems to remain very much unaffected. 

Yes. I don't see how this is in contradiction to anything I wrote in my response to the OP. In fact it seems to that you help support what I said, probably without realizing it. Let me try and clarify.

The stability of Nazi society was not in question. The point stands that 'gassing other human beings to death is wrong' is a moral understanding that all people have, including the Nazis. If the Nazis had believed gassing other people to death was good they would have been gassing their mothers and their children and their best friends. It would have been one big gas party and all loved ones would have been invited. What the Nazis believed was that gassing certain segments of the population to death was a good in that these segments of the population were bad for society. So the Nazis justified acting counter to their natural moral inclinations that 'gassing others is wrong'. Still, as is obvious by their use of justification and the fact that 'gassing to death' was restricted to what they considered a non-desirable element of society, the Nazis help to show that the act of 'gassing people to death' is normally (naturally) considered by human beings to be a moral evil.

Do you see what I am saying now? Humans are obviously programmed, through evolutionary means, to have these broad categorical definitions of good and evil and to assign certain acts, in their broad basic sense, to these categories. They then use or examine justifications to consider specific circumstances and see what difference that makes as to which category an act may be placed in (whether through justification an evil can become a good in a certain set of circumstances). Their sense of good and bad, right and wrong, does not change. They simply recategorize certain acts dependant on certain circumstances.

We can also take this discussion into why I consider the evolutionary basis of these right and wrong categories to be survival if you wish. I personally think from this understanding morals aren;t nearly as mysterious as they seem. 

    That notion that animals do not have a sense of fairness and justice is based on ignorance that much i can tell you, if you bothered to even do an ounce of research you would have found many studies that contradict your view of animals not having a sense of fairness and justice. Here is one regarding monkeys http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3116678.stm

We haven't studied all animals but even dophins have shown fairness amongst themselves. But again, just do some basic research, it's not hard to do, and since you are using the internet might as well use it to expand your knowledge. 

If we work for the same company doing the same job, I expect the same level of pay, not necessarly exacly the same but a FAIR pay. The same goes for the experiement about the monkeys that they do view a form of fairness. Of course I mean the fairness we humans have must be different right? Fairness of pay (like those of women fighting for fair pay) is selfish right? I mean that is selfish that people would expect fairness in this senario? I mean what does a woman care if a man earns more right for the exact same job? It's selfishness not fairness. Come on man fairness is being shown here, if you like to equate it with selfiness then you have no clue what fairness is.

Just for my own two cents:

I also think it's a mistake to assume that all natural explanations for morality must be solely based on evolutionary advantage in some way. I don't doubt that some morality has some kind of a biological/evolutionary basis, but it seems like greedy reductionism to shave it all down to just evolutionary explanations.

Obviously not all ethical beliefs are ones that are evolutionarily advantageous or stable. Abstinence and celibacy, for example, are very popular memes that actually work against the interests of yours genes. Donating money to charity (i.e. to beneficiaries you don't know, are not related to, and will probably never meet) would certainly be considered an ethical act, but how is a charitable donation evolutionarily advantageous or stable?

Biology no doubt plays a role in the formation of ethics, but I think it's also more complicated than that. Culture also plays a role, but the most important factor to consider, I think, is what keeps a social structure stable, not what keeps a species or individual stable.

Explaining ethics naturally is extremely complicated and expecting someone to explain it in any concise and definitive way is a dirty strategy. You might as well be asking them to explain briefly and definitively the natural development of "music". It's far too general a question to begin with, but even explaining certain branches of it will take a very long time. Ethics, though, is even more complicated to discuss than music, so it's especially unfair.

It seems that since many Christians (and other theists) hold a system where their morality IS very easy to explain in a concise and definitive way (i.e. God gave us morality and it is an objective morality---the end), that they expect an equally concise and definitive explanation in its place or else the explanation is somehow not up to snuff. Like any other area of knowledge (think of the evolution of man for example), if the proponent of the natural theory cannot fill in every possible gap that the theist presents, the explanation is not good enough and can therefore be shrugged off as wishy-washy, a good guess, or a nice try.

It's topic that interest me a lot and apparently there have been many who have written about it (Dan Dennett discusses it somewhat near the end of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to name one I'm familiar with, and he cites a few other authors such as Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche, who, according to him (Dennett), were important contributors, but were not without their mistakes).

Anyway, rather than ranting on an on (I didn't even expect to write this much) I'll just say it's not all about the biology, but it's not without biology either.

If anyone knows of any good books on the topic, please let me know!

(Religious texts not wanted. Thanks, but no thanks). 

Are you referring to group selection (i.e. selecting for the benefit of the group)? I don't think biologists are endorsing that kind of explanation anymore. Dawkins dedicates at least one, if not more, entire chapter to the idea in The Selfish Gene (which was written in the 70s). If I remember correctly, he substitutes game theory and ESSs (evolutionarily stable strategies) in its place. I would probably murder any explanation of how it applies though.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll see if a library in the area has it available. 

Interesting comments. 

I'm not sure what else we could credit as the basis of human morality aside from evolutionarily selected tendencies. When we say something is good or bad we are referencing something real. We do not all have an understanding that to kill indiscriminately is wrong simply by chance. This wrongness we refer to is a wrongness with respect to something. The only thing that I can see which could instill this innate understanding of what one references by the terms right and wrong is that through evolutionarily selected responses we are referencing survival benefits and detriments. 

What else could we credit as the basis of moral categories? Even if some other basis can be shown, how would it not be reliant on evolutionary selection? When it comes to human behavior, how is it that any field is not a direct product of evolutionary selection?

Donating money seems to me to be a derivation of cooperation and reciprocal altruism, both of which provide strong survival benefits for social animals. I don't see abstinence and celibacy, in and of themselves, as either good or bad. They do not seem to have moral significance without consideration of further circumstances.

When a society deems them as good or bad for some reason (religious, social i.e. disease control, what have you) then they most definitely have moral value as the behaviors then affect the stability of the society which in turn directly affects the stability of the population or perhaps, in the case of disease control, they affect the stability of the population directly. Then we must answer the question of whether there is justification to perhaps cause social unrest and inflict some amount of instability for the purpose of bringing about greater future stability. But the fundamental questions and categories never change, only the placement of specific instances. Also, that some may bring morally neutral behaviors into the light of moral reasoning and attempt to define them as a societal good or evil does not necessarily mean that they actually have a inherent moral value in themselves.   

But the stability of the social structure and the stability of the species can not be so easily seperated when discussing social animals, can it? Is the social structure not a direct result of selected tendancies and understanding of the moral categories of good and bad, right and wrong? Is the ability to form a stable social structure itself not a distinct survival advantage for a social animal?  Without this understanding of what is appropriate social behavior and what is not (right and wrong), the society could never form to then consider specific social circumstances and how they might justify making ammendments to our naturally instilled code of moral conduct.

I agree it is complicated. But I think if we realize that the only real base of reference for the basic moral categories is survival then we realize that all moral questions must ultimately tie back into this survival base. 

A reply for Vessel:

As far as I can tell, I think we agree on morality, we're just explaining it differently.

In a sense you're absolutely right. Any natural explanation for morality will no doubt be rooted in biology and evolution. For example, I said that we would also have to consider culture and societies, but in order to have culture and societies, there must first be animals who have evolved to a level where they are capable of forming cultures and societies. (Plenty of animals have the society part down, but the culture part is a little more tricky it seems).

What I'm trying to avoid is what Dan Dennett (I've been quoting him a lot lately) calls "greedy reductionism". Just because it can all be traced back to biology, doesn't mean that the explanation should be purely biological. To put it another way, even though we could probably explain the proceedings of a Supreme Court decision in terms of biochemistry (how much farther could you reduce it?), it would be misleading, inappropriate, and a waste of our time to do so.

So I don't intend to remove biology from the heart of morality. We are biological beings, so whatever we are will be rooted in biology. (That seems redundant, but I think you get what I mean). I just don't want any broad-sweeping explanations that fail to take all of the factors into consideration. Morality involves many different things, most of which can be traced to biology in some respect, I just don't think everything NEEDS to be, which is why I say biology should only serve as a piece of the explanation, not the entire basis.

Does that make sense? 

No matter what explanation is uncovered, though, I'm not certain that it will ever be anything black and white. We won't be able to make predictions or draw diagrams like we can with evolution or calculus. I guess that's to say that even though I think we would be able to understand it within a certain margin of confidence, I don't think it's something that can be pinned down to arithmetic science that can be used to make predictions and the like. It's far too slippery.

Then again, Galileo probably couldn't have conceived of a moon-landing. So we'll see, I suppose. 

I have always had a much better explanation for morality without God.

Morality is a product of empathy.  Empathy is built into the human brain.  This is beyond doubt or question because empathy is built into more than just the human brain.  It is a demonstrable quality in all primates and many more mammals, dogs, for instance.  Just as humans are not the only self aware species on earth.  Dolphins and Elephants are also self aware.

Anyway, empathy is basically your ability to place yourself into someone else's position.  When a person thinks about how something happening to someone else would affect them, suddenly the prospect of doing it to someone else or allowing it to happen to someone else is no longer so attractive.  It is for this reason that serial killers and mass murderers need to dehumanize their victims.  If they acknowledged that their victims were people like them they wouldn't be able to do what they do to them.

For instance, Hitler dehumanized the jews, he didn't think it was wrong because he didn't think they were human.  Slave owners dehumanized their slaves, in societies where slaves were not dehumanized the slaves were more often treated with greater civility.  Many serial killers will take measures to dehumanize their victims, these are the ones who are not sociopathic.

Empathy is a function of the brain, and as such is susceptible to damage.  Sociopathic people, have suffered either developmental or physical damage to the part of the brain responsible for empathy.

Now briefly the evolution of social morality.

I believe it should be clear to all that not all morals are universal.  This is a subtle argument against christianity.  Not difinitively, mind, you, but it is an argument against it.  If christianity were correct and all human morality comes from God, all human socities should have the same morals.  We don't, this is obvious to anyone with any knowledge of other cultures.  One obvious explanation for this, and really the only one I can think of (which isn't to say others don't exist), is that morals are not objective.  They are subjective and dependant upon societal needs and structures.  In human hunter gatherer socities, which is what all humans lived in before the development of farming, even murder is alright as long as it was not within the tribe.  This was easy to control because socities were so small.  Everyone within a hunter gatherer group was closely related to everyone else.  In these socities religion is almost entirely restricted to acts of nature, like the weather, earthquakes, etc., or fertility, most often of game.

In socities after the development of farming, which were still small and just starting to produce enough food to allow for larger populations, and also is socities which are only capable of only partial forms of farming, like slash an burn farming which require a semi nomadic lifestyle and thus doesn't allow for the society to grow too large too fast, there are more distant relations.  Still people are either closely related to each other or in a conflict situation there will be close relatives to both parties immediately present.  So murder within the social group will still be uncommon without the need of any outside interference.  Religion here is still mostly confimed to acts of nature and fertility, now the fertility of crops, herds and game.

When farming has gotten to the point where it is supporting large populations we enter into a situation in which in conflict situations within the tribe it becomes increasingly likely that the people involved will have no relation to each other and that there will be no one closely related present to intervene for either or both sides.  In these situations religion starts to shift its focus from merely explaining and hopefully controlling nature and fertility to uniting the unrelated in some surrogate relation.  In the case of christianity the brotherhood of Christ.  Murder within the socities becomes increasingly more and more wrong.

This brings us to large socities like today in which religion has evolved into a full on morality machine.  However as has been pointed out, the morality of religions are only averse to murders within socities.  They are designed and work to maintain civil order.  We expect strangers in our socities to obey our societal laws and so when a stranger is in our societies we treat them like members of our socities.  It is the same for other socities when we are strangers within them.  They developed their religions and socities along the same basic outlines as our socities, with their own unique touches as their societal needs required and their own cultural identity directed.  Outside of a given society, though, religion is used to justify murders and wars with competing moral systems or religions.  Most often the true reasons for such wars have nothing to do with the moral or religious issues which are used to justify them.

What is meant by right and wrong here should be obvious.  The concepts are defined and decided by the society in which you live.  In some eastern or middle eastern socities many things are considered right which are not considered right in our society.  The things which are "right" are the things which are allowed by our culture which do not disturb or threaten our civil order.  Murder is wrong in most circumstances in our society because murder without a good cause, like self defense, is a threat to our civil order, which is why serial killers are bad.  They threaten the safety of the individuals that make up a society, they threaten the civil order.

Things wrong are the things which disturb or threaten the civil order, rape isn't so much a threat to the civil order but it does disturb it.  Remember that morality derives its source from empathy.  You may not be able to fully understand and feel the pain of a rape victim, but you can empathize well enough to know you wouldn't want to be one yourself.  When you know that it can happen to someone else it brings it home that it could happen to you, thus we punish rapists who disturb the civil order.  If we don't catch and punish a serial rapist or a serial killer you or someone you know who is close to you could concievably be the next victim.

Theft in many societies is considered wrong if the society in question, and let's face it there aren't many that don't, regard personal posessions as important.  Probably the only culture I've heard of which does not regard theftt as much of a crime is Tongans.   Tongans also don't place a lot of value on personal possessions...at least they don't in Tonga, or didn't in the past.  This situation may have changed.  But theft is a threat to the civil order in a society whose economy is based on property and ownership rights.  A peron who will just violate such rights is seen as a threat to those rights.

Now the evolution of such rights as ownership rights was a long process, but what it basically amounts to is the eventual legal recognition of a person's attachment to the things they worked to make or worked to acquire.  Even within a society such rights are transitory, they can be taken away by the government for failure to pay taxes, or imminent domain.  They are subjective.  Most people don't experience this, though, so in the current system the right of ownership holds in most cases.

 And in reality nature has not defined the terms right and wrong.  If you look throughout nature many practices are considered right which our culture has deemed wrong for various reasons.  Incest is perfectly fine in dogs, for instance, interspecies relations (horse and donkey = mule), infanticide (when a male lion takes over a pride he eats all of the cubs, or just kills them).  Even homosexuality, which I don't really see as wrong but which many do, is found throughout nature.   So nature has not defined for us what is right and wrong in any really objective sense.  These animals don't live in large unrelated societies, the animals which do do not adopt such behaviors.  Right and wrong are subjectively dictated by the needs of us to live together in a large society to survive as a species.

You can look for further evidence that morality is subjective at still existant hunter gatherer societies.  When to aboriginal New Guineans meet for the first time whilw out gathering alone the first thing they do is talk about all of their relations.  What they're trying to do is find a single person they're both related to in an attempt to find a single reason why they shouldn't try to kill each other for what they've gathered.  This kind of behavior is common and acceptable to the morality of a small hunter gatherer society, these two strangers, if they have no relatives in common, have no one to worry about hurting who they will expect to meet if they fght for each other's food.  Also it would be less work and so more "cost effective" to kill this person and take what he has gathered than it would be to gather it all himself.  At the same time you have to worry about the other person thinking the same things.  But in such societies it's perfectly acceptable to kill a stranger for what he has.  In our society it is not.  But their society has no need for strangers to get along with strangers.  Our society does.

In reality the only objective standard for morality is survival of the species.  Any act which jeapordizes the survival of the species is objectively immoral, this was the original selective pressure for the evolution of empathy.  However aside from this anything is allowed by nature and it is the needs of large societies and their subjective cultural touches which dictate how morality is expressed in any given society. 

To Vessel:

I'm not sure that what you are doing is "greedy reductionism" because, according to the definition of that type of reductionism, it would mean you are ruling out all other explanations in favor of this one biological explanation that is supposed to explain it all with no help. In other words, explaining away the other useful explanations.

You don't seem to be ruling out other explanations as having nothing to do with it, though. You seem to be trying to unify biology with the other sociological and cultural aspects, which is good reductionism rather than greedy reductionism.

Good reductionism considers everything and tries to unify it. Greedy reductionism tries to hastily narrow something complicated down to something simple.

It's kind of a thin line, but an important one.

But I also want to pose to you a question to see how your thinking applies:

How do you apply biology or survival value to religious moral rules such as the wrongness of premarital sex, the wrongness of masturbation, the wrongness of blaspheming the holy spirit, and other such victimless crimes?

I think they are useless rules for the most part, but they are rules that many people conform to. How do you get to there from biology? 

 Maybe this is too broad a question. Just a lame attempt at devil's advocate. I won't hold it against you if you're feeling lazy.

The distinction he draws between good reductionism and greedy reductionism is given in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which, I'm not going to lie, is a rather hefty book. It's a philosopher writing about biology though, so it's not just about cramming biology down your throat. It's more of a "well this is what science knows, and this is what the implications are" kind of a thing. He also talks about scientists that try to argue against certain aspects evolution but then end up reinforcing it (I was surprised to see that this included Stephen J. Gould on several occassions). It's an interesting book, if you don't mind reading about science. (I'm guessing most here don't mind). He talks about biology and morality a little toward the end of the book, but it's nothing especially in-depth.

The only other book of Dennett's I've read so far is Kinds of Minds, which talks about consciousness. He's got another book called Consciousness Explained that apparently tries to explain what consciousness IS, whereas Kinds of Minds is more about starting with small organisms and working his way up, all the while observing how minds become gradually more complex. He then uses this to show that there isn't a definite point where something is either conscious or it is not (just like there is not a definite point where a fetus is a living human or it is not), but there are different stages (or kinds) of consciousness, some more complicated than others. An interesting book that made me want to read Consciousness Explained. I've tried to get Breaking the Spell from the library several times, but some asshole checked it out and has apparently had it for months. I'm starting to wonder if he's even reading it.

Dan Dennett is good. I mean, I'm sure he has opponents, and I'm definitely no philosopher, but I like him because he's doesn't fuck around with ostentatious philosopher language. He gives you the point, he gives you examples, he applies the point, and he does so in human English without inventing thirty-syllable terms for his ideas in the process. He uses easy terms like "skyhooks" vs "cranes" or "universal acid". It's not that he talks to you like you're stupid, it's that he's able to sound intelligent and clever in normal English isntead of the cyborgian philosopher language I've seen some use (theologians are the worst).

Anyway, yeah, I like him.

More or less. Dawkins and Dennett both describe how this can happen very easily in terms of game theory, but I think Dawkins describes it better.

Your input about morality is the point I was trying to make in applying Dennett's types of reductionism. We could talk about biology to partly explain where morality comes from, but we need more than that. You can talk about the physical processes in the brain, but you're not going to get very far explaining the brain until you have a unifying theory. I'm saying there needs to be a sort of unifying theory for morality if it's to be explained at all. Biology will be in there (and will no doubt be a huge contributor to where morality comes from), but that won't be the end of discourse.

An analogy:

If you want to completely understand what's going on, you sometimes have to take the microscope off of 1000x, yes?

But I don't think anyone is disagreeing.

First, I want to make it clear what I am saying when I say the basis of morality is 'survival of the species', for lack of better wording, and that people have a natural programmed sense of right and wrong. I definitely do not mean that we are all equipped with some biological rolodex that we can flip through to look up moral questions and say 'masturbation is objectively wrong' or 'killing a child to save the life of two others is objectively right'. What I'm saying is that when we say "X is wrong" or "X is right" we are saying something more than "X is". In order for this to be true 'right' and 'wrong' need to have some referrent.

Every human being has a sense of right and wrong and the meaning of the words seems to be consistent in that no one ever says 'X is wrong' meaning what someone else would mean by 'X is right'. So these words need to have some basis that is more than just subjective terminology. It is the same as one saying something is 'pleasing' or 'displeasing'. The word pleasing references something biological, something innate that we all share and understand in very much the same way. Even if one person considers pain pleasing and another considers pain displeasing from their subjective viewpoint, what they reference when they use the word pleasing is not subjective. It does not change from subject to subject. The category is objective, it is a fixed reference point by which we categorize sensations as experienced from our subjective viewpoint.

It would seem to me that we mean the same type of thing when we say something is 'right' or something is 'wrong'. These are objective reference points. As objective reference points, they need some grounding point. Being as that what we all have in common is that we are all biological organisms of the same make-up it only makes sense that these objective reference points would be grounded in our biology as it has been constructed by evolutionary processes.

The evolutionary processes that have built the organisms we are have only one 'goal' and that 'goal' is survival. From this point it seems obvious that what evolution has built into us as a sense of moral right and wrong must be grounded in the only thing that evolution is concerned with, again survival.

From this point, we have to look at the consequences that this brings about, given it is true. If our moral sense of right and wrong are built by natural evolution of the goal of survival then, if we ditch for a moment our subjective viewpoint and look at what it is we are really discussing when we say 'X is right' or 'X is wrong' we see that it is actually 'X is beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint' or 'X is detrimental from an evolutionary standpoint'. Beneficial and detrimental from an evolutionary standpoint is definitely objective. Nature has no subjective viewpoint as to what is beneficial or detrimental for the survival of our species.

Now, some may think this is obvious or not saying anything interesting or important, but if we follow this to its logical conclusion we realize that, removed from our subjective viewpoint, all questions will have very definitive moral, or survival, answers. If we understand from this what it is we are actually asking when we ask whether or not a given action is moral, and can understand the natural objective basis from which we take these concepts and thus against which they should be measured, then it seems we should surely gain insight into making moral decisions that are actually relevant and based in what is truly good or bad, or right or wrong, and not merely what we wish was right or wrong from our subjective, often selfish, perspective.

Now, to your questions. I would say that the the things you reference must have some moral value along the spectrum of right to wrong in that the way we decide upon the concepts will have some effect on our ability to survive as a species whether through the effect they have on our social structure or the immediate impact upon the species itself. This impact is objective. But the fact that people may find these things to be subjectively right or wrong is probably not directly biologically based. I would suggest that it is based in our biology through our predilection to acquiesce to authority or our susceptability to memetic viruses which likely serve, or are products of, other survival needs.

Just my thoughts on the matter. I am by no means an authority or even particularly educated in the particular area. What do you think? 

I probably think of it in a similar way.

I'm trying to remember the name of the game theory experiment where they played the prisoner's dilemma game and invited programmers to invent simple programs to compete against one another in the contest. It seems relevant here. If you've heard of this before, then skip right over. It will seem kind of off topic at first, but it should become relevant. (I think).

Basically what was done (can't remember who conducted this project) was that a game was presented. In the game, two "players" were given two cards. One of them said "cooperate" and one of them said "defect". Both players laid their cards simultaneously each round, not knowing what the other player was going to lay. Each player was given points depending on the outcome. The points were set up something like this:

(where you are the player on the left of the dash)

C/C: 5pts for both

D/D: 1pts for both

C/D: You earn 1pts and he earns 3pts.

D/C: He earns 1pts and you earn 3pts.

Programmers sent in various strategy programs to play this game in a computer. For example, one strategy might be "Always defect". Another strategy might be "always cooperate". A third strategy might be "alternate between C and D". A fourth might be "do the opposite of whatever my opponent does" and so on.

The winning program was called tit-for-tat, and it started by cooperating and then simply copy-catted whatever the opponent did on the previous turn thereafter. So if the opponent cooperated on round one, TFT would cooperate on round 2. If the opponent cooperated on round 3, TFT would cooperate on round 4. But it would also copycat defects. By doing so, (if you imagine this in your head), it was able to either score higher amounts of points for itself, or at least remain very stable.

Then the experimenter did something crazy awesome. Instead of putting the programs against one another in tournaments of a fixed number of rounds, he put them all against one another simultaneously in a game consisting of unlimited rounds. Winners earned duplicates of themselves and losers did not.

It was more complicated than this.. i'm trying to recall what I read from memory... but as it turned out.. the cooperating strategies not only did better in the original tournments, but they also did better in the population simulation. Defecting strategies only thrived by playing off of cooperating strategies, but when the population became full of only defecting strategies, the numbers of defecting strategies were forced to dwindle. The cooperating strategies could not only play off of defecting strategies, but they could also retreat from defecting strategies and play off each other to build their number back up.

So according to this test, cooperation DOES seem to be extremely evolutionarily stable.

As for the morals I gave you before, I gave them to you purposely because they seem detrimental to evolutionary stability. (Imagine if all of humanity became celibate!) I presented it as an example of what I meant when I said we can't just focus on the biology all the time. We have to take the microscope off of 1000x at some point. For this question, we have to zoom out a little and look at the social implications. A religious person that subscribes to these codes of conduct does so, I think, for a number of possible reasons.

1. The obvious reason that the person believes that, by following these rules, they will gain everlasting life. Huge biological payoff!

2. The person in question is "cooperating" with his or her community of similarly religious believers. By doing so, they are securing themselves to that community, which is sort of like a protective group. (some are afraid to deconvert because they are afraid of falling out with that community, yes?)

3. It also might make them more appealing to whatever members of the opposite sex in that group they may have an interest in. Just as certain humans are attracted to certain phenotypes (where all humans have a certain degree of phenotypic plasticity), certain humans can be attracted to certain meme-otypes (and we obviously have memetic plasticity).

(or maybe certain meme-otypes are attracted to other meme-otypes? Anyway. You know.) 

4. The person in question may even be "cooperating" with a perceived, but fictional leader figure. For example, the weak lion cooperates with the alpha lion. A god figure opposing these kinds of rules might be a sort of imaginary alpha lion in some way.

Something along those lines. Still reading books and revising.

But everything we attempt to describe is the world at some level. The arena of great philosophical questions narrows with discovery as to our physical nature. These two areas that were once seen as separate environments are slowly coming together and forming a cohesive picture of reality. So to keep on keeping on with philosophical pursuits divorced from scientific understanding is not the way to understanding our existence. We are natural physical biological entities in a physical world. That should always be of relevance to any discussion of which we are a key part.  

The ought's are directly related to the is's once we get a firm undestanding of what the is's are (that was fun).

Yep. Linguistics is an interesting field.

Yes, Textom's examples are part of what neuroscience is starting to show us about the true nature of things like human morality. This is where the picture of at least parts of morality as being reducible to biology is coming from. Game Theory and mirror neurons and a senses of fairness and justice in other animals are all starting to give us a new perspective on what was once considered either divinely inspired or wholly subjective. It is giving us a biologically inspired objective picture. So if we want to discuss morality, even in a philosophical manner, we can not ignore the empirical data that we have. If we do what we are discussing isn't morality.

And again, just because our sense of right and wrong may be inspired by evolution or our altruism may be the result of the firings of mirror neurons or our feelings of love may be spurred by our reward system pushing us to look after our group members that doesn't mean there isn't another perspective, that of the affected entity, that can be discussed. It just gives a picture of the reality of the situation in which to ground those other discussions.    

I am as sure as I can be about anything in that I don't know on what basis to doubt it. If the nature of language is not an attempt to describe the world then what might it be? What else is there for it to be?

You say things like this but don't go on to explain what you think "the most important part" is. You seem to be reaching for purpose divorced from the physical nature of our existence. It seems you think we should hold morals up against the measuring stick of some ought that exists independent of our nature as biological organisms. What could that possibly be?

Had we the ability to take into account every variable and arrive at an actual effect of a given action then, yes, it would only make sense to base moral decisions strictly upon their survival value. There is no other criteria by which to consider them if every criteria can be tied back to an origin of a goal of survival (which if it is born of a product of that origin, it necessarilly can be). Since we can not and never will be able to, as every effect causes an effect, then of course we have to intepret what is the right or wrong action in any given situation subjectively.This doesn't change the nature of morality. It only limits our ability to make truly moral decisions.

Historically, yes, philosophers thought about morals as opposed to researching the actual basis of morality. Now, it seems our insights into the nature of morality are coming from interdisciplinary work. Philosophers who aren't working closely with the data being compiled by neuroscience are missing key parts of the picture.

What are the questions that you consider interesting that have no need for science?

I am not saying ignore psychology's insights into the ways we come to hold certain moral views, or to ignore philosophy's input into, well, whatever there is left to say about morality. I'm just saying that all these things have evolved as natural parts of a biological organism and been filtered through evolutionary processes with their goal of survival. So, to think that there is something other than survival at the root of morality makes no sense.

By ground I mean to anchor in the reality of our existence and what it is to be a natural biological organism on the third rock from the sun; to keep us from floating off on anthropocentric clouds that ignore the reality of our existence and consider our subjective thoughts to exist on some separate plane where what we think about something makes that something so.

The topic I was originally addressing was the basis of godless morality. I took this to mean the grounding framework for the actuality of right and wrong. We have strayed from that, and that is fine, but I just wanted to point out that to think I was considering our subjective viewpoints from individual or social perspectives not worth understanding is innaccurate. They too play a part in our understanding of morality as they too are a product of our evolution as biological organisms. They are one of the variables. They do not change the nature of morality, but they have an effect on the answers to moral questions.

Yes. They are examples of communication meant to convey or elicit facts about the world. They are describing the world to others or asking others to describe the world to us.  We and others are part of the world.

Yes. 

Yes. What exactly is making these decisions and by what means are they making them?

Again, when I am talking about the basis of morality I am talking about the nature of right and wrong themselves. When we are talking about our decision making processes (which are necessarily based in biological functions being as that we are biological organisms, but that'sbeside the point) we are talking about how we place particulars into these categories and whether or not we choose to act on them.

Maybe we need to define 'basis'.

Certainly. That is what we ask. I am only saying, when we ask that, it seems there is an objective criteria by which we can measure that should. This says nothing about what decisions we will make, though it does heavily influence (especially on matters that are fundamentally destructive to survival such as indiscriminate killing), it just says something about the basis by which we make those decisions.    

Brain. 

Natural tendencies, environmental and social influences, rum consumption, etc. 

What other facts are there about how our mind works besides biological ones? They are the very processes by which we make decisions. That is like asking what kind of relevance a car motor has to how the car runs.  

If we aren't taking them on board we aren't thinking. They built that thing we use to think. Should we ignore the nature of the thing we are using to ask the questions?

If you are asking about how much weight we should give our natural inclinations when making moral decisions then that is something else entirely which I haven't discussed at all here because I figured it was beyond the scope of the discussion.

Again, how we come to moral decisions is not what I was discussing, other than pointing out that we are heavily influenced by natural tendencies built through our evolution and nature as a social animal. The basis for what it means for something to be right or wrong is what I was addressing and I see a very objective basis in survival.

Have you ever met anyone who said that killing an infant was wrong but by that meant what you would mean in saying killing an infant was right? If I brought up a child to say right where I would use wrong does this change what is referenced? It seems to me it must be a reference to something innate. Something in our common nature as biological organisms. They are foundational terms without any supporting concepts save our natural understanding of what we mean when we use them. Where do we come by such understanding?

And I might add to that if you disagree with me, I in no way blame you. I am simply stating what I consider to be the basis for a godless morality as requested in the OP. It does not mean I consider myself necessarily correct. Only that I find it a reasonable basis. There are possibly other possible basises, basiss, basi, ? that could support our conceptions of right and wrong as well.

I completely disagree. You arbitrarily rank the importance of one type of inquiry over another. Biological facts are relevant because, as questions at the heart of the very nature of our existence, by which our beings were shaped, of which we are made, we can't ask or answer any question that isn't highly influenced by them. Our nature as biological organisms frames the nature of the philosophical questions we ask. 

Because without survival the question could not be asked. A superficial answer but, then again, you are asking a question that is not at all relevant. It is not important, it simply is. The concepts of right and wrong being based in survival does not require that survival is either right or wrong. To try and label it one or the other doesn't make sense.  

I probably was, being as that I didn't think evolutionary theory had a point. Evolutionary theory simply describes how life came to exist in the variety of forms we see.

We could make a case that life has a point, though. Life has a point of survival. If it didn't, it couldn't exist. It is necesary that any lifeform that exists must have a goal (not a conscious goal of course) of survival or there would not be life.

Yes. 

Of course not. Only things that work to live live and therefor life must necessarily 'have a goal of' or 'work toward' survival if it is to exist, and it does exist, but this is not saying that evolution says things ought to survive. 'Ought' is meaningless removed from any particular perspective like this. 

Wow. If you think I am saying all individuals make their moral choices based on wanting to survive there's a big misunderstanding.

You wouldn't if we were extinct. 

Very. I have cool kids. 

Dude, unwad thy philosopher's panties. I said nothing at all that should be taken as disrespectful to philosophers. If I'd wanted to disresepct philosophers I'd have said that those who can think, and those who can't think about thinking.  

Exactly my point where you were offended above. I didn't say they did it out of a lack of intelligence or because they were too busy doing bong hits. They worked with what they had. Slendiferous. Now they have more and they are using it and it sure seems to help lead to clearer insight.

Yes. They were, and still are, cool with me. 

Well. I think neuroscience is providing understanding. That is much more answer than insight or isnpiration. I am just guessing but I am willing to wager that empirical observation will weigh much heavier in understanding the nature of morality than pure philosophy in the coming years. No knock on philosophy, just that this seems to be where things are heading.    

Yes, pretty much. Not that our choices can all be biologically answered (not that I necessarilly don't think they can, we are biological organisms so whatever choice we make is directly reliant upon...) but, anyway, that our conceptions of what it means for something to be good can be traced to survival value.

Perhaps. If you are saying that you consider good to be meaningless removed from the act to which the term is applied and that it, in and of itself, has no actual referent or orientation then that is probably the major disagreement.

And 'should' references something.  

First person decision making is great. I use it all the time now that I'm divorced. Of course, biology is also relevant to first person decision making. We have to use something to make those decisions.  

By this bit of communication you might be trying to elicit from me the description of a fact about the world that is the level of certainty with which I think my above statement describes the facts of the world. But you aren't really, as the question is rhetorical, and therefor actually conveying the fact of the world that you desire me to think about whether or not my statement describes the facts of the world. It would be more productive if you would just convey to me the facts of the world that you think are not conveyed by the facts of the world as I have conveyed them to you.  

are we still talking about ethics and morals?  How would you create a morality from sceince?  What would your scientific theory look like?  "Murder is wrong because the alpha wave particle from the..." or "thievery should not be allowed because it causes our heart rate to increase."  I'm sorry, but the natural sciences can only be used as tools to try and understand the world.

 if you are talking about ethics, then you are talking about the pursuit of happiness.

I did not use them interchangably here, and this is real life as best I can tell, so no, I don't use them interchangably in real life. Communication is the transfer of facts about the world, where as description is simply comprehension of facts about the world. Description need not be communicated, but communication requires that you are describing something.

Only if we remove an individual's perspective and the existence of their 'feelings' and whatever other chemical/biological processes make up the individual from the category of 'parts of the world' does seeing language and communication as something other than describing facts about the world make sense.

LOL. Well, of course there are philosophical positions involved in the answers. There are philosophical positions involved in the answers to everything. How often does one unpack their entire philosophical wardrobe to address a particular question? That's like saying I shouldn't explain how to build a rafter without first explaining how to pour a foundation, mark out walls, build walls, erect them, and make sure they are level and plumb.

To say that the important questions, as they pertain to morality, are philosophical ones because one needs a philosophical framewqork by which to view the world, and by which, in turn, all beliefs and discussions are colored, is being a little extreme. I can just as easily say that in order to have a philosophical framework by which to view the world one has to be a biological organism with a functioning brain and therefor all the important questions dealing with morality are actually biological. It just depends on where you push it back to.

We are addressing the question of the nature of morality.

Where one thinks biology to have relevance will depend on answers to philosophical questions that come before hand. This by no means dictates that where biology has relevance actually depends on the answer to yadda, yadda... There is a major difference between the two.

Apparently.

Yes. I just like to clarify since declarative statements are easier to use than quantifying everything with an 'I believe' or an 'it seems to me' so there is often the illusion in discussions like these that people think everything they are stating to be obvious facts.

What is "survival values"? For what reason is there to value survival? Are there reasons to stop valuing survival? If you were blind, deaf, and were being constantly pierced by red hot needles, would this cause you to stop valuing life? If you child or wife were about to die, and you sacrificed yourself for them, for what reason would you do so if "survival value" was the ultimate value?

The reason is because you value something more than you value your life

it is part of the natural world, just not part of the scientifically accurate measurable natural world.

Can you measure love in milligrams? Does this mean love does not exist?

A feeling of fulfillment is probably the best way to describe happiness, although this can hardly get it across completely. The only reason to desire to survive is to achieve more happiness. It is not scientifically measurable, but it is measurable by our human experience, and all the decisions on what we do with our lives our based on whether it will make us most happy.

Therefore happiness is the base of ethics, not biology. Biology can be used as a tool to try and understand what makes us most happy, but ultimate end is always happiness.

We aren't in control of biological processes. Survival value is not some decision I make where I am faced with two possibilities and choose the one that oiffers me the best chance to survive. We are talking about the nature that has been programmed into us through evolutionary processes. The questions you ask are not occurences that would have effected the evolutionary path we, as a species, took to arrive at our present biological make-up. If I had evolved as a being that lived in an environment of being blind and deaf and constantly poked with red hot needles I imagine what was beneficial for survival would lead to my existing as a much different being than I am today with a much different sense of what I considered right and wrong. 

Which is a good trait to have if the species is to continue to exist as it leads to you taking care of those who will continue on. 

You can measure the biological processes that are responsible for the sensation we term love, yes. This doesn't tell us what it's like to love but it does tell us what love is.  

Hooray, another Freelancer! :D  I love that game, especially with all the mods since Microsoft released the .ini files.  Anyhow, enough with rambling.  I like your points, they make sense, I have always wondered why emotions are like that, especially guilt for doing what should be natural.  I don't really have anything else to add, your post sums it up pretty well.

Personally, I like to spit at old men and torture small animals.

 Now, you can feel angry with me or call me a scumbag or whatever, but it's just a personal preferance.  You choose to love animals, I choose to torture them.  Who are you to tell me that you're RIGHT and I'm WRONG or anything like that?  Even if I come after YOUR cat, who are you to criticize me?

No, I wasn't serious.  I hate people who abuse the elderly, and I love animals.  Especially my two kittycats.  My point was that you gotta be pissed at the statements above, that suggested I'm a sadist with no empathy or remorse.  But even if I was, you're not better than me, by your own standards.  It's just personal choice.

You can't even criticize the old testament people no matter what they did.  You can't criticize Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.  Can you?  If so, HOW?

As for the examples you gave of the old testament, I listened to Todd Friel the other day talking about it in regard to some clip from the very first episode of The West Wing.  He quoted something from the new testament that is supposed to show how some of these laws were right for the society in the past, but they don't fit in our times.  Now, it's not about every single law, but some laws.

 As for "sex slaves" in the old testament:

To be fair, god gave certain laws to avoid the situation of horny men grabbin some hotties for instant gratification.  A man who takes a female slave has to let her mourn the deaths of her loved ones for a week.  During that mourning she shaves her hair and dresses in a bag.  So for 7 days this man is supposed to make sure she has all that she needs, see her in the most heartbreaking situation, as she mourns, plus she's in her most unattractive.  Only after these 7 days he's allowed to sleep with her. 

Now, you might say it's still disgusting, and I see what you mean, but it shows you that there is certain wisdon in this book, and an attempt to restrain men from their natural urges, as they are forced to practice self control.

 As for David:  The bible regards him as an immoral sinner, and practically a murderer.

But that is all irrelevant to the main question of this forum, which isn't about Judaism or Christianity.  If you think these laws regarding the treatment of human beings by human beings are wrong, then please tell me why.  Why is  your empathy better than the sadism of people who want to kill your cats?