> and this sounds silly to us, because we know that “kicking the sunrise” is impossible, because sun is a planet, it is far away, and your kicking has no impact on it.
No, the reason it sounds silly to you is not because it’s not true, but because it’s not part of your own sacred beliefs. There is no fundamental reason for people to support things you are taking for granted as moral facts, like women’s right or racial rights.
In fact, given an accurate model of the world, a lot of things that make the most sense you may find distasteful based on your current unusual “moral” fashions.
For example, exterminating opposing groups is common in human societies historically. Often groups are competing for resources, since one group wants more resources for them and their progeny, exterminating the other group makes the most sense.
And if the fundamental desire for survival and dominance—drilled into us by evolution—isn’t moral, then the concept just seems totally meaningless.
And if the fundamental desire for survival and dominance—drilled into us by evolution—isn’t moral, then the concept just seems totally meaningless.
A concept is “totally meaningless” just because it does not match some evolutionary strategies? First, concepts are concepts, regardless of what is their relation to evolution. Second, there are many strategies in evolution, including things like cooperation or commitments, which intuitively seem more aligned with morality.
Humans are a social species, where the most aggresive one with most muscles is not necessarily a winner. Sometimes it is actually a loser, who gets beaten by the cops and thrown in jail. Another example: Some homeless people are quite scary and they can survive things that I probably cannot imagine; yet, from the evolutionary perspective, they are usually less successful than me.
Even if a group wants to exterminate another group, it is usually easier if they befriend a different group first, and then attack together. But you usually don’t make friends by being a backstabbing asshole. And “not being a backstabbing asshole” is kinda what morality is about.
There is no fundamental reason for people to support things you are taking for granted as moral facts, like women’s right or racial rights.
Here we need to decouple moral principles from factual beliefs. On the level of moral principles, many people accept “if some individual is similar to me, they should be treated with some basic respect” as a moral rule. Not all of them, of course. If someone does not accept this moral rule, then… de gustibus non est disputandum, I guess. (I suspect that ethics is somehow downstream of aesthetics, but I may be confused about this.) But even if someone accepts this rule, the actual application will depend on their factual beliefs about who is “similar to me”.
I believe it is a statement about the world (not just some kind of sacred belief) that approval of women’s rights is positively correlated with the belief that (mentally) women are similar to men. Similarly, the approval of racial rights is positively correlated with the belief that people of different races are (mentally) similar to each other. This statement should be something that both people who approve and who disapprove of the aforementioned rights should agree upon.
At least it seems to me that historically, people who promoted these rights often argued about similarity; and people who opposed these rights often argued about dissimilarity. For example, if you believe that women are inherently incapable of abstract thinking, then of course it does not make any sense to let them study at universities. Or if you believe that black people enjoy being slaves, and actually slavery is much better for them than freedom, then of course abolitionists are just evil fanatics. But if it turns of that these beliefs are factually wrong, then this belief update has moral consequences. If does not effect which moral principles you accept; but if you already accept some moral principles (and many people do) it can effect what these moral principles apply to. You can become an X rights proponent not by adopting a new moral principle, but by learning that your already existing moral principle actually also applies to group X (and then it requires some moral pressure to overcome compartmentalization).
This agains if different from the question what is the right meaning of the word “similar” in sentence “people similar to me should be treated with respect”. What kinds of similarity matter? Is the color of the eyes important? Or is it more about being sentient, capable of feeling pain, and such stuff? Again, it seems to me that if someone decides that the color of the eyes is ultimately unimportant, that person is not making a completely random decision, but someone builds on the already existing underlying moral feelings (perhaps combining them with some factual beliefs about how the eye color is or isn’t related to other things that matter).
No, the reason it sounds silly to you is not because it’s not true, but because it’s not part of your own sacred beliefs. There is no fundamental reason for people to support things you are taking for granted as moral facts, like women’s right or racial rights.
In fact, given an accurate model of the world, a lot of things that make the most sense you may find distasteful based on your current unusual “moral” fashions.
For example, exterminating opposing groups is common in human societies historically. Often groups are competing for resources, since one group wants more resources for them and their progeny, exterminating the other group makes the most sense.
And if the fundamental desire for survival and dominance—drilled into us by evolution—isn’t moral, then the concept just seems totally meaningless.
A concept is “totally meaningless” just because it does not match some evolutionary strategies? First, concepts are concepts, regardless of what is their relation to evolution. Second, there are many strategies in evolution, including things like cooperation or commitments, which intuitively seem more aligned with morality.
Humans are a social species, where the most aggresive one with most muscles is not necessarily a winner. Sometimes it is actually a loser, who gets beaten by the cops and thrown in jail. Another example: Some homeless people are quite scary and they can survive things that I probably cannot imagine; yet, from the evolutionary perspective, they are usually less successful than me.
Even if a group wants to exterminate another group, it is usually easier if they befriend a different group first, and then attack together. But you usually don’t make friends by being a backstabbing asshole. And “not being a backstabbing asshole” is kinda what morality is about.
Here we need to decouple moral principles from factual beliefs. On the level of moral principles, many people accept “if some individual is similar to me, they should be treated with some basic respect” as a moral rule. Not all of them, of course. If someone does not accept this moral rule, then… de gustibus non est disputandum, I guess. (I suspect that ethics is somehow downstream of aesthetics, but I may be confused about this.) But even if someone accepts this rule, the actual application will depend on their factual beliefs about who is “similar to me”.
I believe it is a statement about the world (not just some kind of sacred belief) that approval of women’s rights is positively correlated with the belief that (mentally) women are similar to men. Similarly, the approval of racial rights is positively correlated with the belief that people of different races are (mentally) similar to each other. This statement should be something that both people who approve and who disapprove of the aforementioned rights should agree upon.
At least it seems to me that historically, people who promoted these rights often argued about similarity; and people who opposed these rights often argued about dissimilarity. For example, if you believe that women are inherently incapable of abstract thinking, then of course it does not make any sense to let them study at universities. Or if you believe that black people enjoy being slaves, and actually slavery is much better for them than freedom, then of course abolitionists are just evil fanatics. But if it turns of that these beliefs are factually wrong, then this belief update has moral consequences. If does not effect which moral principles you accept; but if you already accept some moral principles (and many people do) it can effect what these moral principles apply to. You can become an X rights proponent not by adopting a new moral principle, but by learning that your already existing moral principle actually also applies to group X (and then it requires some moral pressure to overcome compartmentalization).
This agains if different from the question what is the right meaning of the word “similar” in sentence “people similar to me should be treated with respect”. What kinds of similarity matter? Is the color of the eyes important? Or is it more about being sentient, capable of feeling pain, and such stuff? Again, it seems to me that if someone decides that the color of the eyes is ultimately unimportant, that person is not making a completely random decision, but someone builds on the already existing underlying moral feelings (perhaps combining them with some factual beliefs about how the eye color is or isn’t related to other things that matter).