Basically, morality is a product of evolution—which can be expected to favour some moral values over other ones—just as it favours certain physical structures like eyes and legs.
Things like: “under most circumstances, don’t massacre your relatives or yourself” can be reasonably expected to be widespread values in the universe. The idea gives morality a foundation in the natural world.
It is useful that Tim summarizes his position in this context, voted up.
My position, developed with no background in philosophy or meta-ethics whatsoever and thus likely to be error-riddled or misguided, is that I consider it an unsolved problem within physical materialism (specifically, within the context of moral anti-realism) how “meaning” (the meaning of life and/or the value of values) can be a coherent or possible concept.
My case was here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1m5/savulescu_genetically_enhance_humanity_or_face/1fuv
Basically, morality is a product of evolution—which can be expected to favour some moral values over other ones—just as it favours certain physical structures like eyes and legs.
Things like: “under most circumstances, don’t massacre your relatives or yourself” can be reasonably expected to be widespread values in the universe. The idea gives morality a foundation in the natural world.
It is useful that Tim summarizes his position in this context, voted up.
My position, developed with no background in philosophy or meta-ethics whatsoever and thus likely to be error-riddled or misguided, is that I consider it an unsolved problem within physical materialism (specifically, within the context of moral anti-realism) how “meaning” (the meaning of life and/or the value of values) can be a coherent or possible concept.
Leave humans out of it and try to think about meanings of signals among animals, with an evolutionary perspective.