By changing a mind, you can change what it prefers; you can even change what it believes to be right; but you cannot change what is right. Anything you talk about, that can be changed in this way, is not ‘right-ness’.
If the characters were real people, I’d say here Obert is “right” while having a wrong justification. Just extrapolate the evolutionary origins of moral intuitions into any society in approximate technological stasis. “Rightness” is how the evolutionarily stable strategy feels like from the inside, and that depends on the environment.
If the population is not limited by the availability of food, thus single mothers can feed their children, some form of low-key polygyny/promiscuity are the reproductive strategy that ends up as the only game in town.
If instead food limits population, monogamy comes out victorious (for the bulk of the population, at least). If additionally we come know that hand-labor is expensive, then we can say that women are economically valuable (even if outright regarded as assets, they are very precious) and they can negotiate comparatively good treatment (as in, compared to the next paragraph). We might see related rituals, like bride-price, or the marriage ceremony looking like a kidnapping (the theft of a valuable laborer).
On the other hand, if hand-labor is cheap, then the output of a worker may not even earn the food necessary to sustain herself, and women are economic liabilities apart from their reproductive capacity. It is under these circumstances that we can find veiling, guarding, honor killings, FGM, and sati (killing widows). Groom-price (often confused with a different form of dowry under a single label) and, to avoid it, groom kidnapping happen here, too.
“Moral progress” happens by the environment changing the payoffs to strategies. Hating other tribes goes away temporarily when they become allies, and permanently when the allied tribes merge and it becomes too difficult to tell who belongs to which tribe. (“I think I’m three-eights blegg, by my maternal grandfather and by my paternal...”)
One implication is that we have so much discussion on the nature of morality exactly because it is unclear what (if any) human behavior stands the best chance of propagating itself into the future with high fidelity. Alternative phrasing: this is an age of whalefall, and we get to implement policies other than morality, the one that satisfies Moloch. (This is not a new claim: the evolutionary origins of moral intuitions means that morality is how past policies of satisfying Moloch feel like from the inside.)
If the characters were real people, I’d say here Obert is “right” while having a wrong justification. Just extrapolate the evolutionary origins of moral intuitions into any society in approximate technological stasis. “Rightness” is how the evolutionarily stable strategy feels like from the inside, and that depends on the environment.
If the population is not limited by the availability of food, thus single mothers can feed their children, some form of low-key polygyny/promiscuity are the reproductive strategy that ends up as the only game in town.
If instead food limits population, monogamy comes out victorious (for the bulk of the population, at least). If additionally we come know that hand-labor is expensive, then we can say that women are economically valuable (even if outright regarded as assets, they are very precious) and they can negotiate comparatively good treatment (as in, compared to the next paragraph). We might see related rituals, like bride-price, or the marriage ceremony looking like a kidnapping (the theft of a valuable laborer).
On the other hand, if hand-labor is cheap, then the output of a worker may not even earn the food necessary to sustain herself, and women are economic liabilities apart from their reproductive capacity. It is under these circumstances that we can find veiling, guarding, honor killings, FGM, and sati (killing widows). Groom-price (often confused with a different form of dowry under a single label) and, to avoid it, groom kidnapping happen here, too.
“Moral progress” happens by the environment changing the payoffs to strategies. Hating other tribes goes away temporarily when they become allies, and permanently when the allied tribes merge and it becomes too difficult to tell who belongs to which tribe. (“I think I’m three-eights blegg, by my maternal grandfather and by my paternal...”)
One implication is that we have so much discussion on the nature of morality exactly because it is unclear what (if any) human behavior stands the best chance of propagating itself into the future with high fidelity. Alternative phrasing: this is an age of whalefall, and we get to implement policies other than morality, the one that satisfies Moloch. (This is not a new claim: the evolutionary origins of moral intuitions means that morality is how past policies of satisfying Moloch feel like from the inside.)