Oh shit. I get it. Morality exists outside of ourselves in the same way that paperclips exists outside clippies.
Babyeating is justified by some of the same impulses as baby saving: protecting ones own genetic line.
It’s not necessarily as well motivated by the criteria of saving sentient creatures from pain, but you might be able to make an argument for it. Maybe if you took thhe opposite path and said not that pain was bad, but that sentience / long life/ grandchildren was good and baby eating was a “moral decision” for having grand children.
First part yes, rest… not quite. (or maybe I’m misunderstanding you?)
“Protecting one’s own genetic line” would be more the evolutionary reason. ie, part of the process that led to us valuing morality as opposed to valuing paperclips. (or, hypothetically fictionally alternately, part of the process that led to the Babyeaters valuing babyeating instead of valuing morality.)
But that’s not exactly a moral justification as much as it is part of an explanation of why we care about morality. We should save babies… because! ie, Babies (or people in general, for that matter) dying is bad. Killing innocent sentients, especially those that have had the least opportunity to live, is extra bad. The fact that I care about this is ultimately in part explained via evolutionary processes, but that’s not the justification.
The hypothetical Babyeaters do not care about morality. That’s kind of the point. It’s not that they’ve come to different conclusions about morality as much as the thing that they value isn’t quite morality in the first place.
I… don’t think so. One theory of morality is that killing death is bad. Sure, that’s at least a component of most moral systems, but there are certain circumstance under which killing is good or okay. Such as if the person you’re killing is a Nazi or a werewolf or if they are a fetus you could not support to adulthood or trying to kill you or a death row inmate guilty of a crime by rule of law.
Justifications for killing are often moral.
Babyeaters are, in a way at least possessing similarities to human morality, justified by giving the fewer remaining children a chance at a life with the guidance of adult babyeaters, and more resources since they don’t have to compete against millions of their siblings.
This allows babyeaters to develop something like empathy, affection, bonding, love and happiness for the surviving babyeater kind. Without this, babyeaters would be unable to make a babyeater society, and it’s really easy to apply utilitarianism to it in the same way utilitarian theory can apply utilitarian theory to human morality.
It’s also justified because it’s an individual sacrifice to your own genetic line, rather than the eating other babyeater’s children, which is the type of a grandchildren maximizer would do. The need of the many > The wants of the few, which also plays a part in various theories of morality.
I’d say they reached the same conclusion that we did about most things, it’s just they took necessary and important moral sacrifice, and turned it into a ritual that is now detached from morality.
It damn well sounds like we’re talking about the same thing. The only objection I can think of is that they re aliens and that that would be highly improbable, but if morality is just an evolutionary optimization strategy among intelligent minds, even something that could be computed mathematically, then it isn’t necessarily any more unlikely than that certain parts of human and plant anatomy would follow the Fibonacci sequence.
Oh shit. I get it. Morality exists outside of ourselves in the same way that paperclips exists outside clippies.
Babyeating is justified by some of the same impulses as baby saving: protecting ones own genetic line.
It’s not necessarily as well motivated by the criteria of saving sentient creatures from pain, but you might be able to make an argument for it. Maybe if you took thhe opposite path and said not that pain was bad, but that sentience / long life/ grandchildren was good and baby eating was a “moral decision” for having grand children.
First part yes, rest… not quite. (or maybe I’m misunderstanding you?)
“Protecting one’s own genetic line” would be more the evolutionary reason. ie, part of the process that led to us valuing morality as opposed to valuing paperclips. (or, hypothetically fictionally alternately, part of the process that led to the Babyeaters valuing babyeating instead of valuing morality.)
But that’s not exactly a moral justification as much as it is part of an explanation of why we care about morality. We should save babies… because! ie, Babies (or people in general, for that matter) dying is bad. Killing innocent sentients, especially those that have had the least opportunity to live, is extra bad. The fact that I care about this is ultimately in part explained via evolutionary processes, but that’s not the justification.
The hypothetical Babyeaters do not care about morality. That’s kind of the point. It’s not that they’ve come to different conclusions about morality as much as the thing that they value isn’t quite morality in the first place.
I… don’t think so. One theory of morality is that killing death is bad. Sure, that’s at least a component of most moral systems, but there are certain circumstance under which killing is good or okay. Such as if the person you’re killing is a Nazi or a werewolf or if they are a fetus you could not support to adulthood or trying to kill you or a death row inmate guilty of a crime by rule of law.
Justifications for killing are often moral.
Babyeaters are, in a way at least possessing similarities to human morality, justified by giving the fewer remaining children a chance at a life with the guidance of adult babyeaters, and more resources since they don’t have to compete against millions of their siblings.
This allows babyeaters to develop something like empathy, affection, bonding, love and happiness for the surviving babyeater kind. Without this, babyeaters would be unable to make a babyeater society, and it’s really easy to apply utilitarianism to it in the same way utilitarian theory can apply utilitarian theory to human morality.
It’s also justified because it’s an individual sacrifice to your own genetic line, rather than the eating other babyeater’s children, which is the type of a grandchildren maximizer would do. The need of the many > The wants of the few, which also plays a part in various theories of morality.
I’d say they reached the same conclusion that we did about most things, it’s just they took necessary and important moral sacrifice, and turned it into a ritual that is now detached from morality.
It damn well sounds like we’re talking about the same thing. The only objection I can think of is that they re aliens and that that would be highly improbable, but if morality is just an evolutionary optimization strategy among intelligent minds, even something that could be computed mathematically, then it isn’t necessarily any more unlikely than that certain parts of human and plant anatomy would follow the Fibonacci sequence.