The Moral Argument

[beyondbelief]

I quite like moral realism as a philosophy, particularly off the back of Sam Harris' book (The Moral Landscape). There are certainly some issues with it, but at the heart of it I think it chimes quite nicely with our place in the world, as evolved creatures.

As a thought experiment, imagine the barbarism of our early forebears - the envy for others' property/wives/progeny.
The violence goes back and forth until some wise old sage realises that both sides are losing members of their communities and that it might be a good idea to stop with all that, even making pacts with rival tribes. It doesn't require all that much genius, and some of it comes from empathy anyway. Our ability to reflect upon causes and effects and historical decisions is good enough to teach us some useful lessons. If we only had statistical thinking in our hardware, we'd be even better.

I do believe that there are absolute morals, only in the sense that there are demonstrable causes of suffering in this world. Some of those are borne out by our attachment to our kin - if it weren't for this, I wouldn't give a monkeys whether my father lived or died. So I wouldn't care too much if a rival tribesman had murdered him. As it is, I care greatly - I have an emotional attachment to him and don't want to see him be harmed. Likewise I can (often) empathise with a rival tribesman who cares for his father. Most of this is pretty much mutual respect for other people's feelings.

These things get hairy when other people are offended by 'crimes' that do not actually affect them - e.g. homosexuality. I suppose if you're superstitious enough to think that God is angry with everyone for allowing people to mind their own business then you would feel obliged to punish people for it, lest you be flooded or whatever. And that superstition is holding us all back.

[Sal1981]

Ohhh, Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape is on my wishlist on Amazon.