On Objective Morality
Should/ought statements don't inform on the nature of morality, that is they don't tell us what is or isn't moral. Rather, should/ought statements are made from what we already believe to be moral and it is this morality that I propose we can conclude objectively. (claim, needs examples)
Science is at its most useful when it can reliably predict/discover the nature of reality. If we accept this aspect of science to be accurate then we can conclude that fields of study like history, economics, psychology and meteorology can be considered scientific so long as they can predict/discover the past, present and future nature of reality they aim to explain with useful amounts of reliability. That these fields don't follow the scientific method doesn't invalidate them as scientific, it merely means that the scientific method is an incomplete method for explaining reality. (demonstrate the predictability of ethics. Must be rigorous enough to match the usefulness of other social sciences)
Most moral values, if not all, can be reduced to a value for well-being. However, a value for well-being (or any other value) is itself something that we must justify objectively before a scientific field of ethics can be formulated. I suspect we can use other fields like evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy etc. as scaffolding to help create a science-based field of ethics.
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My theory on the link between Vaules and Morality.
Most of the things we seek to act upon, acquire and belief are also the things we value; for the things we dis-value we avoid. We are limited in the amount of time we have to follow our plans or perform our actions and we can't be in two places at once, thus we are forced to choose which investment of our time and effort we'll take upon that will return the most reward. In this sense value is a metric for actions, beliefs or property.
Our Values, however, can come into conflict with the values of others. A value for stealing someone else's stuff will conflict with that someone's value for keeping personal belongings safe. So as societies grow in numbers we developed methods to resolve these conflicts through social norms, honor cultures, law enforcement etc. In turn, a value for the well-being of others and oneself seems like a value that could form the least amount of conflict between people, thus being a good anchor to base our morality on. (find more evidence for well-being as the lens through which to view objective morality from)
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The Suicide Case Study:
On 1978 in the settlement of Jonestown, Indiana US, as many as 918 people belonging to the cult "Peoples Temple" committed mass suicide. This event - and suicide in general - strikes me as immoral, however I've had a hard time fitting suicide with my theory of conflicting values since there is no apparent conflict when it comes to suicide. One way I make sense of it is that future you has just as much right to live as present you and they may yet have a more optimistic value for life than the present you.
The Brainwashing/indoctrination Value Resolution Case Study:
It strikes me as immoral to resort to brainwashing as a resolution to conflicting values. If a person is expected to have a value conflict where they to have the best understanding humanity has of reality, then it should be immoral to withhold information or to coerce a change in beliefs just to arrive at conflict-free values within a group. If our best understanding of reality delivers us to the best returns from least investments, then our ability to discover the best values for our actions and which values work best within a group, all largely hinge on how well educated we all are when it comes to our culture's overall morality.
The Appropriation of Morality Systems by Cultures/Religions Case Study.
Human values are discoverable. They have been discovered in parallel within different groups/cultures. For example, the golden rule being discovered in ancient Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, Rome; see Wikipedia>golden rule>ancient history. A good analogy would be "Christian physics" and "Muslim algebra" simply becoming physics and algebra. We've realized mathematics is discoverable and that it needn't be tied to religion to be useful. More over, eventually "human values" may just become "values" when we realize that other animals and extraterrestrials can also hold and discover their own values independently.
The value conflict theory is something that science could work with. We can study which values people hold by analyzing how people live and what they believe while on their own and within growing groups. We can analyze which values are prone to conflict and which influence cooperation. From whatever results, we can form a spectrum of values that we could recognize as morality.
WIP roadmap
>Reality
>Actions people take to accomplish goals and the limitations that come with them
>Values as a metric for the importance of actions (importance: returns most per investment of time+effort)
>Conflict of values within a group
>Education influences how efficient people are at measuring the importance of actions and conflict resolutions
>Resolution of value conflicts and people synergizing their values for cooperation and peace
>Morality
Science is at its most useful when it can reliably predict/discover the nature of reality. If we accept this aspect of science to be accurate then we can conclude that fields of study like history, economics, psychology and meteorology can be considered scientific so long as they can predict/discover the past, present and future nature of reality they aim to explain with useful amounts of reliability. That these fields don't follow the scientific method doesn't invalidate them as scientific, it merely means that the scientific method is an incomplete method for explaining reality. (demonstrate the predictability of ethics. Must be rigorous enough to match the usefulness of other social sciences)
Most moral values, if not all, can be reduced to a value for well-being. However, a value for well-being (or any other value) is itself something that we must justify objectively before a scientific field of ethics can be formulated. I suspect we can use other fields like evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy etc. as scaffolding to help create a science-based field of ethics.
--==--
My theory on the link between Vaules and Morality.
Most of the things we seek to act upon, acquire and belief are also the things we value; for the things we dis-value we avoid. We are limited in the amount of time we have to follow our plans or perform our actions and we can't be in two places at once, thus we are forced to choose which investment of our time and effort we'll take upon that will return the most reward. In this sense value is a metric for actions, beliefs or property.
Our Values, however, can come into conflict with the values of others. A value for stealing someone else's stuff will conflict with that someone's value for keeping personal belongings safe. So as societies grow in numbers we developed methods to resolve these conflicts through social norms, honor cultures, law enforcement etc. In turn, a value for the well-being of others and oneself seems like a value that could form the least amount of conflict between people, thus being a good anchor to base our morality on. (find more evidence for well-being as the lens through which to view objective morality from)
--==--
The Suicide Case Study:
On 1978 in the settlement of Jonestown, Indiana US, as many as 918 people belonging to the cult "Peoples Temple" committed mass suicide. This event - and suicide in general - strikes me as immoral, however I've had a hard time fitting suicide with my theory of conflicting values since there is no apparent conflict when it comes to suicide. One way I make sense of it is that future you has just as much right to live as present you and they may yet have a more optimistic value for life than the present you.
The Brainwashing/indoctrination Value Resolution Case Study:
It strikes me as immoral to resort to brainwashing as a resolution to conflicting values. If a person is expected to have a value conflict where they to have the best understanding humanity has of reality, then it should be immoral to withhold information or to coerce a change in beliefs just to arrive at conflict-free values within a group. If our best understanding of reality delivers us to the best returns from least investments, then our ability to discover the best values for our actions and which values work best within a group, all largely hinge on how well educated we all are when it comes to our culture's overall morality.
The Appropriation of Morality Systems by Cultures/Religions Case Study.
Human values are discoverable. They have been discovered in parallel within different groups/cultures. For example, the golden rule being discovered in ancient Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, Rome; see Wikipedia>golden rule>ancient history. A good analogy would be "Christian physics" and "Muslim algebra" simply becoming physics and algebra. We've realized mathematics is discoverable and that it needn't be tied to religion to be useful. More over, eventually "human values" may just become "values" when we realize that other animals and extraterrestrials can also hold and discover their own values independently.
The value conflict theory is something that science could work with. We can study which values people hold by analyzing how people live and what they believe while on their own and within growing groups. We can analyze which values are prone to conflict and which influence cooperation. From whatever results, we can form a spectrum of values that we could recognize as morality.
WIP roadmap
>Reality
>Actions people take to accomplish goals and the limitations that come with them
>Values as a metric for the importance of actions (importance: returns most per investment of time+effort)
>Conflict of values within a group
>Education influences how efficient people are at measuring the importance of actions and conflict resolutions
>Resolution of value conflicts and people synergizing their values for cooperation and peace
>Morality
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