We’re still going in circles. Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value? Morals have definitely got better by that measure. Please, when you reply, don’t use words like “best” or “optimal” or “merit” or any such normative phrase without specifying the measure against which you’re maximising.
Re: “Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value?”
No!
The basic idea is that some moral systems are better than other—in nature’s eyes. I.e. they are more likely to exist in the universe. Invoking nature as arbitrator will probably not please those who think that nature favours the immoral—but they should at least agree that nature provides a yardstick with which to measure moral systems.
I don’t have access to the details of which moral systems nature favours. If I did—and had a convincing supporting argument—there would probably be fewer debates about morality. However, the moral systems we have seen on the planet so far certainly seem to be pertinent evidence.
Measured by this standard, moral progress cannot fail to occur. In any case, that’s a measure of progress quite orthogonal to what I value, and so of course gives me no reason to celebrate moral progress.
Moral degeneration would typically correspond to devolution—which happens in highly radioactive environments, or under frequent meteorite impacts, or other
negative local environmental condittions—provided these are avoidable elsewhere.
However, we don’t see very much devolution happening on this planet—which explains why I think moral progress is happening.
I am inclined to doubt that nature’s values are orthogonal to your own. Nature built you, and you are part of a successful culture produced by a successful species. Nature made you and your values—you can reasonably be expected to agree on a number of things.
I am inclined to doubt that nature’s values are orthogonal to your own. Nature built you, and you are part of a successful culture produced by a successful species. Nature made you and your values—you can reasonably be expected to agree on a number of things.
From the perspective of the universe at large, humans are at best an interesting anomaly. Humans, plus all domesticated animals, crops, etc, compose less than 2% of the earth’s biomass. The entire biomass is a few parts per billion of the earth (maybe it’s important as a surface feature, but life is still outmassed by about a million times by the oceans and a thousand times by the atmosphere). The earth itself is a few parts per million of the solar system, which is one of several billion like it in the galaxy.
All of the mass in this galaxy, and all the other galaxy, quasars, and other visible collections of matter, are outmassed five to ten times by hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space.
And all that, all baryonic matter, composes a few percent of the mass-energy of the universe.
Sufficiently hostile environmental conditions destroy living things by causing error catastrophes / mutational meltdowns. You have to go in the opposite direction to see constructive, adaptive evolution—which is basically what I was talking about.
Most living systems can be expected to seek out those conditions. If they are powerful enough to migrate, they will mostly exist where living is practical, and mostly die out under conditions which are unfavourable.
Sufficiently hostile environmental conditions destroy living things by causing error catastrophes / mutational meltdowns. You have to go in the opposite direction to see constructive, adaptive evolution—which is basically what I was talking about.
If your environment is insufficiently hostile there will be no natural selection at all. Evolution does not have a direction. The life that survives survives the life that does not, does not. That’s it. Conditions are favorable for some life and unfavorable for others. There are indeed conditions where few complex, macroscopic life forms will develop-- but that is because in those conditions it is disadvantageous to be complex or macroscopic. If you live next to an underwater steam vent you’re probably the kind of thing that likes to live there and won’t do well in Monaco.
Wait a minute. This entire conversation begins with you conflating moral progress and directional evolution.
However, we don’t see very much devolution happening on this planet—which explains why I think moral progress is happening.
Is the relationship between biological and ethical evolution just an analogy or something more for you?
Then I say: what you call good biological changes other organisms would experience as negative changes and vice versa.
You throw out the thesis about evolution having a direction because life fills more and more niches and is more and more complex. If those are things that are important to you, great. But that doesn’t mean any particular organism should be excited about evolution or that there is a fact of the matter about things getting better. If you have the adaptations to survive in a complex, niche-saturated environment good for your DNA! If you don’t, you’re dead. If you like complexity things are getting better. If you don’t things are getting worse. But the ‘getting better’ or ‘getting worse’ is in your head. All that is really happening is that things are getting more complex.
And this is the point about the ‘shifting moral Zeitgeist’ (which is a perfectly fine turn of phrase btw, because it doesn’t imply the current moral Zeitgeist is any truer than the last one). Maybe you can identify trends in how values change but that doesn’t make the new values better. But since the moral Zeitgeist is defined by the moral beliefs most people hold, most people will always see moral history up to that point in time as progressive. Similarly, most young people will experience moral progress the rest of their lives as the old die out.
I think there is some kind of muddle occurring here.
I cited the material about directional evolution in response to the claim that: “Evolution does not have a direction.”
It was not to do with morality, it was to do with whether evolution is directional. I thought I made that pretty clear by quoting the specific point I was responding to.
Evolution is a gigantic optimization mechanism, a fitness maximizer. It operates in a relatively benign environment that permits cumulative evolution—thus the rather obvious evolutionary arrow.
Re: “Is the relationship between biological and ethical evolution just an analogy or something more for you?”
Ethics is part of biology, so there is at least some link. Beyond that, I am not sure what sort of analogy you are suggesting. Maybe in some evil parallel universe, morality gets progressively nastier over time. However, I am more concerned with the situation in the world we observe.
The section you quoted is out of context. I was actually explaining how the idea that “moral progress cannot fail to occur” was not a logical consequence of moral evolution—because of the possibility of moral devolution. It really is possible to look back and conclude that your ancestors had better moral standards.
I haven’t read the books, though I’m familiar with the thesis. Your essay is afaict a restatement of that thesis. Now, maybe the argument is sufficiently complex that it needs to be made in a book and I’ll remain ignorant until I get around to reading one of these books. But it would be convenient if someone could make the argument in few enough words that I don’t have to spend a month investigating it.
Nature is my candidate for providing an objective basis for morality.
Moral systems that don’t exist—or soon won’t exist—might have some interest value—but generally, it is not much use being good if you are dead.
“Might is right” does not seem like a terribly good summary of nature’s fitness criteria. They are more varied than that—e.g. see the birds of paradise—which are often more beautiful than mighty.
Isn’t this a definitional dispute? I don’t think Drescher thinks some goal system is privileged in a queer way. Timeless game theory might talk about things that sound suspiciously like objective morality (all timelessly-trading minds effectively having the same compromise goal system?), but which are still mundane facts about the multiverse and counterfactually dependent on the distribution of existing optimizers.
And there are plenty of moral realists who think that there is such a thing as morality, and our ethical theories track it, and we haven’t figured out how to fully specify it yet.
I don’t think Stefan Pernar makes much sense on this topic.
David Pearce’s position is more reasonable—and not very different from mine—since pleasure and pain (loosely speaking) are part of what nature uses to motivate and reward action in living things. However, I disagree with David on a number of things—and prefer my position. For example, I am concerned that David will create wireheads.
I don’t know about Gary’s position—but the Golden Rule is a platitude that most moral thinkers would pay lip service to—though I haven’t heard it used as a foundation of moral behaviour before. Superficially, things like sexual differences make the rule not-as-golden-as-all-that.
Also: “Some examples of robust “moral realists” include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, Ayn Rand, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Thomas Nagel.”
We’re still going in circles. Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value? Morals have definitely got better by that measure. Please, when you reply, don’t use words like “best” or “optimal” or “merit” or any such normative phrase without specifying the measure against which you’re maximising.
Re: “Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value?”
No!
The basic idea is that some moral systems are better than other—in nature’s eyes. I.e. they are more likely to exist in the universe. Invoking nature as arbitrator will probably not please those who think that nature favours the immoral—but they should at least agree that nature provides a yardstick with which to measure moral systems.
I don’t have access to the details of which moral systems nature favours. If I did—and had a convincing supporting argument—there would probably be fewer debates about morality. However, the moral systems we have seen on the planet so far certainly seem to be pertinent evidence.
Measured by this standard, moral progress cannot fail to occur. In any case, that’s a measure of progress quite orthogonal to what I value, and so of course gives me no reason to celebrate moral progress.
Re: “moral progress cannot fail to occur”
Moral degeneration would typically correspond to devolution—which happens in highly radioactive environments, or under frequent meteorite impacts, or other negative local environmental condittions—provided these are avoidable elsewhere.
However, we don’t see very much devolution happening on this planet—which explains why I think moral progress is happening.
I am inclined to doubt that nature’s values are orthogonal to your own. Nature built you, and you are part of a successful culture produced by a successful species. Nature made you and your values—you can reasonably be expected to agree on a number of things.
From the perspective of the universe at large, humans are at best an interesting anomaly. Humans, plus all domesticated animals, crops, etc, compose less than 2% of the earth’s biomass. The entire biomass is a few parts per billion of the earth (maybe it’s important as a surface feature, but life is still outmassed by about a million times by the oceans and a thousand times by the atmosphere). The earth itself is a few parts per million of the solar system, which is one of several billion like it in the galaxy.
All of the mass in this galaxy, and all the other galaxy, quasars, and other visible collections of matter, are outmassed five to ten times by hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space.
And all that, all baryonic matter, composes a few percent of the mass-energy of the universe.
Negative?! They’re great for the bacteria that survive.
And I suspect those with “devolved” morality would feel the same way.
Sufficiently hostile environmental conditions destroy living things by causing error catastrophes / mutational meltdowns. You have to go in the opposite direction to see constructive, adaptive evolution—which is basically what I was talking about.
Most living systems can be expected to seek out those conditions. If they are powerful enough to migrate, they will mostly exist where living is practical, and mostly die out under conditions which are unfavourable.
If your environment is insufficiently hostile there will be no natural selection at all. Evolution does not have a direction. The life that survives survives the life that does not, does not. That’s it. Conditions are favorable for some life and unfavorable for others. There are indeed conditions where few complex, macroscopic life forms will develop-- but that is because in those conditions it is disadvantageous to be complex or macroscopic. If you live next to an underwater steam vent you’re probably the kind of thing that likes to live there and won’t do well in Monaco.
Re: “Evolution does not have a direction.”
My essay about that: http://originoflife.net/direction/
See also, the books “Non-Zero” and “Evolution’s Arrow”.
There is no reason to associate complexity with moral progress.
Sure. The evidence for moral progress is rather different—e.g. see:
“Richard Dawkins—The Shifting Moral Zeitgeist”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwz6B8BFkb4
Wait a minute. This entire conversation begins with you conflating moral progress and directional evolution.
Is the relationship between biological and ethical evolution just an analogy or something more for you?
Then I say: what you call good biological changes other organisms would experience as negative changes and vice versa.
You throw out the thesis about evolution having a direction because life fills more and more niches and is more and more complex. If those are things that are important to you, great. But that doesn’t mean any particular organism should be excited about evolution or that there is a fact of the matter about things getting better. If you have the adaptations to survive in a complex, niche-saturated environment good for your DNA! If you don’t, you’re dead. If you like complexity things are getting better. If you don’t things are getting worse. But the ‘getting better’ or ‘getting worse’ is in your head. All that is really happening is that things are getting more complex.
And this is the point about the ‘shifting moral Zeitgeist’ (which is a perfectly fine turn of phrase btw, because it doesn’t imply the current moral Zeitgeist is any truer than the last one). Maybe you can identify trends in how values change but that doesn’t make the new values better. But since the moral Zeitgeist is defined by the moral beliefs most people hold, most people will always see moral history up to that point in time as progressive. Similarly, most young people will experience moral progress the rest of their lives as the old die out.
I think there is some kind of muddle occurring here.
I cited the material about directional evolution in response to the claim that: “Evolution does not have a direction.”
It was not to do with morality, it was to do with whether evolution is directional. I thought I made that pretty clear by quoting the specific point I was responding to.
Evolution is a gigantic optimization mechanism, a fitness maximizer. It operates in a relatively benign environment that permits cumulative evolution—thus the rather obvious evolutionary arrow.
Re: “Is the relationship between biological and ethical evolution just an analogy or something more for you?”
Ethics is part of biology, so there is at least some link. Beyond that, I am not sure what sort of analogy you are suggesting. Maybe in some evil parallel universe, morality gets progressively nastier over time. However, I am more concerned with the situation in the world we observe.
The section you quoted is out of context. I was actually explaining how the idea that “moral progress cannot fail to occur” was not a logical consequence of moral evolution—because of the possibility of moral devolution. It really is possible to look back and conclude that your ancestors had better moral standards.
We have already discussed the issue of whether organisms can be expected to see history as moral progress on this thread, starting with:
“If drift were a good hypothesis, steps “forwards” (from our POV) would be about as common as steps “backwards”.”
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1m5/savulescu_genetically_enhance_humanity_or_face/1ffn
I haven’t read the books, though I’m familiar with the thesis. Your essay is afaict a restatement of that thesis. Now, maybe the argument is sufficiently complex that it needs to be made in a book and I’ll remain ignorant until I get around to reading one of these books. But it would be convenient if someone could make the argument in few enough words that I don’t have to spend a month investigating it.
Re: “If your environment is insufficiently hostile there will be no natural selection at all.”
See Malthus on resource limitation, though.
So, “might as right” …
Nature is my candidate for providing an objective basis for morality.
Moral systems that don’t exist—or soon won’t exist—might have some interest value—but generally, it is not much use being good if you are dead.
“Might is right” does not seem like a terribly good summary of nature’s fitness criteria. They are more varied than that—e.g. see the birds of paradise—which are often more beautiful than mighty.
Ah, ok. That is enlightening. Of the Great Remaining Moral Realists, we have:
Tim Tyler: “The basic idea is that some moral systems are better than other—in nature’s eyes. I.e. they are more likely to exist in the universe.”
Stefan Pernar: “compassion as a rational moral duty irrespective of an agents level of intelligence or available resources.”
David Pearce: “Pleasure and pain are intrinsically motivating and objectively Good and Bad, respectively”
Gary Drescher: “Use the Golden Rule: treat others as you would have them treat you”
Drescher’s use of the Golden Rule comes from his views on acausal game-theoretic cooperation, not from moral realism.
But he furthermore thinks that this can be leveraged to create an objective morality.
Isn’t this a definitional dispute? I don’t think Drescher thinks some goal system is privileged in a queer way. Timeless game theory might talk about things that sound suspiciously like objective morality (all timelessly-trading minds effectively having the same compromise goal system?), but which are still mundane facts about the multiverse and counterfactually dependent on the distribution of existing optimizers.
When I spoke to Drescher at SS09 he seemed to imply a belief in moral realism. I’ll have to go read good and real to see what he actually says.
And there are plenty of moral realists who think that there is such a thing as morality, and our ethical theories track it, and we haven’t figured out how to fully specify it yet.
I don’t think Stefan Pernar makes much sense on this topic.
David Pearce’s position is more reasonable—and not very different from mine—since pleasure and pain (loosely speaking) are part of what nature uses to motivate and reward action in living things. However, I disagree with David on a number of things—and prefer my position. For example, I am concerned that David will create wireheads.
I don’t know about Gary’s position—but the Golden Rule is a platitude that most moral thinkers would pay lip service to—though I haven’t heard it used as a foundation of moral behaviour before. Superficially, things like sexual differences make the rule not-as-golden-as-all-that.
Also: “Some examples of robust “moral realists” include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, Ayn Rand, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Thomas Nagel.”