In posts # 93 and 106, Hamby posited two hypothetical situations where one might make costs benefits analysis of the morality of an act of prostitution.

What I find interesting in both of these hypotheticals is that in both cases the act of prostitution is recognized as "bad."

In post #93 it is viewed as the least of the possible evils,  in post #106 it is viewed as a "bad" thing that is none-the-less outweighed by the "good" of lots of money.   I don't want to belabor this, because I get the impression that Hamby is writing an essay on morality and I wonder if he is actually working his way up to a point, but I would like would like to point out that NEITHER of these hypotheticals even address the issue of the morality of prostitution.

An act of killing a human being is morally neutral.  Murder is generally accepted as immoral.

An act of prostitution is morally neutral.  The institution of prostitution is....?  We have not yet heard Hamby's answer.

By the way, by what rational reason is murder immoral?  After all, we are just highly complex molecular machines.  What's wrong with stopping the clockwork?  I submit that there is no rational answer to this question.  I submit that we recognize murder as immoral because we have been programmed by evolution to have an aversion to killing each other, and to place value on each other, and that we then use our capacity for reason to rationalize this instinct with statements like "Do unto others..." and "The sanctity of life" You can see why the religious might personalize these instincts and attribute them to "God's will," We might even recognize that a society that condones murder would be a horrible place to live, but rationality doesn’t really enter into where our morals come from.

Evolution is an algorithm, and therefore has its own logic and grammar, but the human subjective experience of that logic is typically that it "just is."  The reasoning behind our intuition is outside of our conscious awareness, just as the information encoded on our DNA is outside our conscious awareness.

Duh.

Disregard the part where I'm obviously reading deficient.

The institution of prostitution/act of prostitution is not analogous to murder/killing.

I'm finding it hard to disagree with anything you said in post 124.  I do have one question though:

Can you name any human act, behavior or institution that is not "moraly neutral except for it's context?"

If no, then what is the significance of even discussing the morality of prostitution?  And for that matter, what about the context of how prostitution manifests itself here on planet earth, or in America, or in your home town?  If in that context it is moral/immoral, then why is it moral/immoral?  What makes it so?

If yes, then what is that inherently immoral act, and what makes that act immoral?

This is not a small question.  Christians are always claiming that "without god you have no basis for morality."  I don't buy that arguement any more than you do I'm sure, but what IS the basis for morality?  If it's all contextual (which strikes me as likely) what is it about one context that makes a behavior moral and another context that makes it immoral?  Surely, the fact that an act is condoned by one's in-group is not a good enough answer - that's what the Nazi's thought, and we can see where it lead them.

You strike me as both a prolific writer and the philosophical type, so I'm sure you have been down this road before.  If you want to just supply me with a link about what you think on this topic, I would be most gratetful.

I am.  Always question a researcher who claims that his own moral values are the higest on the developmental scale!  I do like the idea of moral development though.  It is a good concept that appears to be very robustly supported by evidence. 

  Hi girl you is so so pretty, .... she knows what I really mean but just says, yeah I know, thanks .... Umm she ain't interested, then I say name your price. It often works and I get so happy for an hour. It's nice to have an extra 20 bucks ......     up close ..... I adore girls ..... just something about them ..... geeezzz, .... lock us up now for what ????      

  Hey Lesbians, I AM am Lezzz  too, just stuck in a man's' body ......  Can I please join in ,  please like me ,  I like you ..... I have never found a guy I would do .....  I AM way Lezzz it seems ...... 

  more proof positive that guys are all pussy whipped, thing is I AM all for it !

mountain - mississippi queen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bwcBakIBaA

Mountain-Never In My Life-From Live in Paris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5hKZ6GlYZc

>>>> Leslie West - Never In My Life - Night Of The Guitars 1988 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NDt0_7Ay-o

I AM A SLAVE !         

Sorry to come back so late on this. It's illegal to solicit sex in a public place, which means on street corners, etc. However, you are allowed to advertise in print. If you look in the classfieds in your paper, you'll see a crapload of "escorts". Those are actually all prostitutes. They aren't allowed to discuss prices in the paper, but a telephone call is considered a private communication and isn't public solicitation.

They can't have you come over to their place or a regular hotel room, as it would constitute operating a bawdry house or brothel. However they can meet you at your place or a hotel room you book. However, most police services in Canada recognize the safety issue here and don't enforce the brothel part of the law.

Despite having to aerate my ass to get the smoke out of it, I like your attitude.

You seem to be arguing that morality is ultimately the same as people's perceptions of morality.  Is this what you want to do?

Again, you seem to be arguing that people's moral sense is morality, and that logic cannot override it.  Do you mean to do this?

And yet, this would contradict you if you were to follow that line of logic for very far.  People often do what they logically believe to be more moral, even though they know in advance that they will feel guilt over it.  What do you make of that?

Pfft.  That's not what I'm asking.  The butterfly effect...  Who knows whether Stewie became a sexless loser because of the swimming accident?  It could have been any number of things.  Only in cartoons and movies can we really tie a person's future to a single incident in the past.  (Ten bonus points if you know the reference.)

You've already answered what I meant you to answer, though.  If you're going to be consistent, you must believe that committing an immoral act means that, at least for the moment, the person is immoral, right?  Or, perhaps you don't think of a single act as defining a person's state of morality/immorality?  What criteria do you use?

Ah, yes.  Of course, the more we learn about mirror neurons, the more we're beginning to understand things like Asperger syndrome.  Perhaps people who don't get far on the Kohlberg scale have a similar problem with them?  I dunno.

Not yet.  I'm curious if we can ferret out a couple of things that morality isn't before really digging into what it might be.  Do you want to offer up any suggestions?  I thought you were going to get to a big point a few posts back, but you're either not willing to give up that ground, or don't know what I'm talking about.

Forgive me if I don't want to just blurt out what I believe the answer to be.  As you well know, people like an idea much better when they come up with it themselves.

First, here are a few quotes of yours:

You're dancing around the issue, and never giving it a good left jab to the jaw.  Correct me if I misstate, but here are the distilled versions of things you've told me about morality:

1) People have an innate 'sense' of morality.

2) People's sense doesn't necessarily (or necessarily even often) line up with the most logical thing to do in a situation.

3) Often, people must overcome their guilt/shame etc... (read: innate moral sense) to do the more logical thing.

What does this tell you about the objective reality of what morality is?

There have been those who wondered why I'm not in the field since I seem so damned interested in it...

And where does this tendency fall on the moral scale?  If logic tells you the correct answer, and you eschew it for personal feelings, isn't that... um... selfish?  And isn't that immoral?

Except when one of those options is questioning faith...  Sorry.  I said I wasn't going to get you started. 

That's true, isn't it!  (Ok.  Now you're getting to the part where I use your answers to my advantage.)  What does that say about this vaunted inner sense of morality?  It seems damn ineffective in so many situations.

Ok, obviously it goes to personal weighing of values, but this is sort of like saying, "A is exactly the same as A."  What does this tendency tell us about the reliability (and ultimate value) of personal weighing of values?  After all, it takes a trained professional, detached and logical, to help so many people figure out otherwise simple problems.

Just for shits and giggles, let me quote you from an earlier post:

"The principals of morality I try to live by are:

1) Be honest with yourself even when it hurts.  ESPECIALLY when it hurts."

The funny thing is, we've got two serious problems.  The 'hurt' from moral dilemmas often accompanies a weakening of cognitive abilities.  You just said so yourself.  How do we know when we are being honest with ourself because it hurts or when we are avoiding asking the hard questions because they hurt?

Clearly, individuals weighing their own morality is not a very accurate system.  Does that leave us with the government?  We've seen how that works out.  Where does it leave us?

Ten points.

I'm pretty sure if you got down to brass tacks, this is what 98% of the population does.  I'm trying to get you to make some conclusions about this obvious piece of data.  You're a professional, for crying out loud.

Please, don't get me started on 12-step programs, but you're right.  Number 4 is a real issue.

I'd be willing to bet there's something we can learn about our morality from this.

Have you read The Authoritarian Specter, by Robert Altman?  If you haven't, why the hell not?  If you have, what are your opinions about it?

If you didn't think you were getting graded, what would your best guess be?

Have you asked any of the designers what morality is?

Don't some people learn to suppress their innate sense of morality?  They become incredibly good at swindling people (cough, cough... Jimmy Swaggart...)  Or, are they fulfilling their innate morality?  Again, have you read The Authoritarian Specter?

A damn fine evolutionary adaptation, if you ask me.  Unlike some of our cousins, we can adapt our innate behaviors to the point of individual detriment for abstract good.  We've actually evolved the ability to at least somewhat contradict our biology.  However, I must ask again, have you read The Authoritarian Specter?

The curious question is this:  Are smarter people, on average, more or less moral?  (Of course, I'm baiting you with that question.  What standard are we using to judge them?)

I haven't read that book, but it sound like a good one. I'll have to check it out.

Well, the word I keep tripping up on is “objective.” There are 3 answers to this question that I can think of:

1) There IS NO objective morality. Simple answer, crappy results. Humans seem to need morality to keep from killing each other and I, for one, like living in a peaceful society.

2) The only “objective” standard for morality I can think of is “that which increases the frequency of my genes in the environment.” By this standard, genocide is bad because I share so many genes with the people I may be killing that it violates this standard. Promiscuity is bad because game theory says that I will have better availability of mating resources if I loosely follow the “one person per person” rule, but cheating is not bad because once in a while I can get away with spreading my DNA around a little.

3) I’m being dense and simply not getting where you are going with this. Clearly our moral sense is a blunt instrument for determining the right course of action. How we perceive morality is extremely malleable, both as individuals and as a species. How one tests one’s moral intuitions against an objective criteria assumes that there is an objective criteria in the first place. This simply takes me back to the first two answers, neither of which sits well with me.

Check out industrial psychology, and research psychology. Both of these avoid this distasteful dilemma. But then if you find putting up with religiosity distasteful, you should try exercising compassion with a sex offender. That will make your skin crawl!

That it’s a series of rules of thumb with fuzzy-logic running throughout the system. What’s your point? What standard do you judge the validity of these responses against?

To me your whole last post can be boiled down to two propositions:

1) Human beings have poor skills when it comes to judging the morality of a situation.

2) logic is a better tool than human intuitions for determining morality.

I agree with both of these propositions, but what is the standard by which you measure objective morality? How do you know it’s the right standard?

We are talking about reality testing here. How do you test moral reality? I think human moral systems might be built something like this:

1) “Objective morality“ = what promotes the frequency of my DNA in the environment

2) Evolution gives rise to to a moral sense (a la Haidt’s five emotional responses that humans use to intuit morality: harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity.

3) This gets processed through our cerebral cortex and we assign language to these emotions which in English are referred to as values and principals

4) Most of us respond with our intuition, but to some extent we do use logic and reason to determine what value and principal “should” take primacy in any given moral dilemma.

But here is the part that I have to say “I don’t know” about. Why “should” one value take precedence over another? Why are the emotions of harm and fairness primary when dealing with genocide, from outside the culture, but INSIDE the culture the emotions of community, authority and purity are what are causing the genocide in the first place?

I’m comfortable saying that the slaughter of the Jews is wrong, and that Nazi’s were delusional (religiously inspired delusions at that), but THEY thought they were acting morally.

Teaching someone new morality involves re-ordering their moral priorities around new moral principals. Intuitively (there’s that word again), I sense that some moral principals are “higher” than others, but I still couldn’t tell you why.

Maybe the part of my brain that does that calculus is on the right side, so it’s far from my language centers, but still, what is this “objective” morality you keep speaking about?

Hamby you have yet to use the word “values” to describe morality. I’m not sure how you can get away from this concept. How can you judge morality without saying X has more value than Y?

I want to give you an example from counseling that is both fun (in my world) and illustrative of what I’m talking about. It’s the “If you can’t live without me, why aren’t you dead yet” intervention:

College student comes up to me (distressed).

Her: “I don’t know what to do. I broke up with my boyfriend, and now he’s saying he’s going to kill himself if I don’t get back together with him.”

Me: “So he’s sort of blackmailing you then?”

Her: “yeah. I don’t’ want to go out with him, but I don’t want him to hurt himself” (Harm vs. Fairness)

Me: “Do you think he’s serious?”

Her: “I don’t know”

Me: “Ok, well, let me ask you something: Are you trained as a qualified professional to determine the risk of someone who is suicidal?”

Her: “Well, no, I asked him to go talk to the school counselor and he refused.”

Me: “Ok, well, who do you know who IS qualified?”

Her: “well, YOU are!”

Me: “True, but I’m not on call. On the other hand, the police ARE on call, and they are trained to at least make the judgment about whether or not to bring him to the hospital for evaluation.”

Her: “Well I don’t want to call the cops on him!” (community vs. authority)

Me: “Well, look at it this way. If he’s really suicidal, then he’s not safe. You need to do the responsible thing and attend to his safety. If he’s just trying to emotionally blackmail you (which is likely) then by having the cops show up on his door, you are calling his bluff, and he’s going to stop this bullshit. He either gets the help he needs or he gets exposed as a fraud. Either way you win.”

Her: “wow, I never thought of that!”

The initial conflict is harm Vs fairness. She doesn’t want to see him hurt, but It’s not fair to her to live her life in extortion. Further she expresses conflict around community Vs. authority. She doesn’t want to sell him out. It’s only when I show her that harm trumps community in this case that she brightens up, and starts looking at her other options. She realizes that she can use his safety to call him on his bullshit and expose him for the whiney little bitch that he is.

However, there are lots of situations (like the military) where community trumps harm.

Why does one trump the other at all? Why does it change from situation to situation? It’s easy to use logic once you have made the judgment that one value trumps another. You can even use logic to justify why one value trumps another, but at some level you are choosing one over the other. I get the impression that logic comes AFTER you make that choice.

Susac?

Yes?