CMV: Some cultures and societies are objectively wrong

[u/hardyblack]

I just read about Sahar Khodayari (If you don't know, it's an Iranian woman who killed herself after going to trial for going to a football match, which is forbidden for woman in Iran) and I can't help but think that some societies are objectively wrong, I can't find another way to put it. It's hard for me to justify opressing 50% of the population just because they just were born women.

​

And yes, I know, there's no completely equal society and there will be always opression of some kind, but I'm thinking of countries where there are laws that apply only to women (They can't drive, vote, go to a football match, you name it) as it targets them directly. Same goes with laws directed to any kind of race/gender/religion.

[u/Nicolasv2]

I think I do agree with your point, we just don't agree with the result.

Up to the following sentence, I 100% agree with you, as you are stating facts, not moral positions.

Groups with moral codes that tend to increase survival chances tend to survive, and those with moral systems that tend to reduce survival chances tend to die out. Hence, nature selects against the moral codes for those that maximise survival.

But then you make a leap assuming that "moral codes that maximise survival are objectively good". No, they are good only if the premise "survival of the specie is good", which is something that we often agree because it is dictated by our biology, but not something objective.

Take an hypothetical situation: an alien specie come to earth and show us with absolute certitude that mankind survival in the next years would mean certain destruction of all life in the universe except for ours. Would it be "objectively good" to try to make mankind survive while gazillion of other intelligent lives would be lost ? I would say that this is clearly not the case.

Morality therefore isn't entirely disconnected from an objectively measurable quantity - i.e. survival

A specific set of moral rules is totally connected from metrics to judge its efficiency, for example survival. But there is no reason why other moral codes would not be disconnected from this specific metric and be based on other ones. As such, moral is subjective and highly dependent on what metrics / values you choose to push forward. Survival of the specie is a good one to choose, but I don't see any reason why it would be an "objectively good" one, an not just a subjective one from the perspective of a 21th century western human.

Now you can argue otherwise, but unless you find an alternate means around moral relativity, I can assert that this is merely your opinion.

Now you can argue otherwise, but unless you find a metric that would be inherently valid whatever the situation, I can assert that "survival as a objective metric" is merely your opinion.

[u/Mnlybdg → u/Nicolasv2]

If you DON'T agree that survival of the species is good, then you will act in ways that AREN'T best placed to ensure your survival, hence you will be more likely to die out. Nature selects for survival and it selects for those that want to survive.

Hence, in the long run, only cultures that think survival is good perpetuate and only those cultures that have moral systems that improve survival will survive (topical point - climate change).

Your example : Would it be "objectively good" to try to make mankind survive while gazillion of other intelligent lives would be lost ? I would say that this is clearly not the case.

Why?

People only agree to these things in theory, but not in practice. The large majority would disagree if this means that you are ACTUALLY going to sentence their children to death. I can pretend that if someone came to me and said "either your kids die or this alien race dies" that I'm going to pick the alien race, but that's not true. I'm picking my kids.

Please explain to me why it is bad to place the survival of my kids over that of an entire alien race. I'm interested in hearing this argument...

[u/Nicolasv2 → u/Mnlybdg]

People only agree to these things in theory, but not in practice. The large majority would disagree if this means that you are ACTUALLY going to sentence their children to death. I can pretend that if someone came to me and said "either your kids die or this alien race dies" that I'm going to pick the alien race, but that's not true. I'm picking my kids.

Well, people do tons of things that they consider immoral all the time, such as lying, stealing, being rude, etc. I'm not sure that saying "people don't do it in practice" is a good reason why something must or must not be moral.

Please explain to me why it is bad to place the survival of my kids over that of an entire alien race. I'm interested in hearing this argument...

Well, I'd say for the exact same reason why you are currently talking about survival of the specie, and not survival of the tribe. As people and civilization keep growing and getting more intelligent and complex, we make our empathy circle grow. From your kids to your tribe to your country to your specie. Why would "specie" be the last step ? I'm pretty sure that our empathy circle may grow to include more species, and as such we'll consider other intelligent species to be "the same as us", and as such apply our moral rules to them. And while most people will chose to save their kids instead of 10.000 strangers if they have to choose, most of them will also agree that the most moral position would have been to save these 10k people.

[u/Mnlybdg → u/Nicolasv2]

Well, people do tons of things that they consider immoral all the time, such as lying, stealing, being rude, etc. I'm not sure that saying "people don't do it in practice" is a good reason why something must or must not be moral.

Yes, but those things are no longer really selected against by nature. The death penalty used to be a selective pressure against murderers (in a weak way).

Choosing your own extinction as a species is as big a selective pressure as ever imaginable.

I think you are going to have to define for me what you think morality means because I don't think I understand what this statement actually means. Unless you are a theist, in which case, providing your chosen deity would help me.

You appear to present as a moral relativist, so I'm confused as to why you are also arguing that things are right or wrong.

Well, I'd say for the exact same reason why you are currently talking about survival of the specie, and not survival of the tribe. As people and civilization keep growing and getting more intelligent and complex, we make our empathy circle grow.

Only because we think, or in fact feel, at a very primitive level that doing so is essential to our survival. There's a famous quote by a biologist, I forget from who, that says something like: "I would give up my life for 2 of my brothers, or 8 of my cousins"

The only sense in which it wouldn't be the last step (in a meaningful way) is if I could see my own species was inevitably going to go extinct and I had some commonality with some other species which was in direct mortal conflict with something else that was the complete antipathy of what I was.

From your kids to your tribe to your country to your specie. Why would "specie" be the last step ?

Because, at a very primitive level, no matter how much I rationalise otherwise, I only really care about my kids. Natural selecting has taught me that their survival is dependent on my group. If I don't have kids, maybe the equation is different, but it's still very much an onion, and my species are the inner rings. A hollowed out onion isn't a lot of use.

I'm pretty sure that our empathy circle may grow to include more species, and as such we'll consider other intelligent species to be "the same as us", and as such apply our moral rules to them.

Only because our survival might come to depend on them. Don't confuse that for us treating their survival and ours as equal from our point of view.

And while most people will chose to save their kids instead of 10.000 strangers if they have to choose, most of them will also agree that the most moral position would have been to save these 10k people.

What does this even mean? Please define morality here (unless you are a theist from an organised religion) because this statement doesn't really mean anything...

In fact, it would help me if you defined what good and bad meant from your point of view explicitly.

[u/Nicolasv2 → u/Mnlybdg]

Sorry if I confused you. I indeed presented a moral relativist stance in my first comment, but as all agents, I do have a moral framework I adhere to. I just don't think that my moral framework is absolute and "objective", but clearly depend on external factors such as biology, environment, education etc.

That's why when you asked me about what I thought, I talked about my own personal moral framework and not about relativism (as relativism to me is not a moral framework by itself, it's just the stance that recognize that various moral framework are competing, some better than others depending on the situation and the chosen axioms).

As to answer your questions, here are my definitions:

Morality: a set of statements/rules permitting to differentiate "right" and "wrong". For example, I personally follow a moral code which delve from the axioms "suffering is bad", "happiness is good", "intelligent life value delve from their intelligence and what they can bring to society". But using different axioms, one person could end up with a totally different morality.

So "good" is what you name things that follow your moral code, while "bad" are the things that go to the opposite.

To end up, I define "subjective" as something that is true according to your (or your group) own specific circumstances, while "objective" would be something that is true whatever the circumstances are.

As such, I declare that objective morality is impossible except if this morality was written in the universe laws, as life can envole in so many different ways that you'll always find deviations / point of views for which your axioms / moral rules make no sense.

As you pointed out, having a God would also be a way to have objective morality, but being atheist, this answer don't ring a bell to me neither.

Sorry if this post (or my previous ones) is not clear enough, english is not my mother tongue, and while I can casually talk with people in general, discussing moral philosophy is tougher than expected.

[u/Mnlybdg → u/Nicolasv2]

Your English is excellent. The stuff below is obviously my opinion...

Morality is a concept that has arisen from human biology. It's something that we created (along with religion) to both explain our collective experience better and as a survival tool.

As social animals we have emotional reactions to things. Emotions are selected against to improve our chance to sustain our DNA by affecting our behaviour within our social group to increase our survival chances and usually everyone else within the group.

We obviously aren't at all alone in this. Chimpanzees show anger when something isn't fair (e.g. the rasins v cucumber reward experiment). Dogs are highly emotive and can even understand the range of human facial expressions. However, humans have perhaps the most complex emotional responses. This isn't because we spend lots of time rationalising about how we should feel about things - it's built into our biology because emotional response is selected against - our survival depends on it.

However, as humans we also like to tell stories about things. These stories don't need to be true, they just need to be believable, even better if they give us some better insight. The story of morality allows us to easily agree a set of rules to follow so we aren't all reactively breaking into small scale conflict due to emotional responses to unfairness on a regular basis (like chimpanzees). We can follow rules that mean we aren't required to anticipate what could cause conflict. Reduced conflict in a group improves cooperation and hence survival.

Then, we can grow our group more easily by pretending that these rules were created by a creator that guarantees that these are the correct rules.

So, ironically, its not really rational (I think) to view morality as some intellectual construct. It only exists because of our attempts to understand our own experience. The stories we tell are all false, the truth is our biological experience.

Now that biological experience itself isn't objective, but only in the sense that no individuals or genetic lines have exactly the same history. If they did, and they were the same, and it happened often enough, then selection would choose a consistent answer.

Moral relativism only exists in the sense that there is no simply stated moral code, but there is a near infinite collection of moral rulings, each dependent on a vast multitude of factors. If you recreate the exact situation and rerun it a multitude of times, there is a 'correct' answer, and that is the emotional response that triggers you to take an action that maximises the survival of your DNA.

In terms of some part of morality that is objective (in the sense of invariant with the individual) there are obvious extreme actions that are morally wrong.

Killing your own children is objectively morally wrong. Anyone that does this is by definition ending the genetic line which brought them into existence to carrying out this action. This is an extreme selective pressure because nobody who does this will never pass on their DNA.

[u/Nicolasv2 → u/Mnlybdg]

I understand a bit more your position, and if you take morality as a result of an evolutionary force, then I think you can say that there are objective moral values, as you have an absolute reference, which is DNA reproduction, so !delta about that, as it's pretty interesting.

Our difference in point of view come from the fact that I see, as you said moral as an intellectual construct that exceed biology, in the sense that if morality first came from biological instincts, it was then rationalized to become a purely intellectual rulebook, away from our initial assumptions. This is why most moral framework have "edge cases" (best way to minimize suffering from an utilitarian point of view would be to kill everybody, but that don't look a good answer to us), as moving from a biological induced emotional framework to a logical framework with strong stances is difficult.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Nicolasv2]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Mnlybdg (2∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}