But this is predicated on the idea that morality isn’t truly relative, which I’m not sure I agree with. I think you’re conflating morality with justice, though even then, while there is more to morality (or justice) than pure subjectivity/relativity, I also think there is more to these things than pure objectivity. Kind of like quantum mechanics, there’s no such thing as morality without participants/observers, and as soon as you have participants/observers you can’t determine morality without understanding the relative positions. More to the point, no one person can actually know all the facts surrounding any action, event, etc. No one can ACTUALLY know, in a third party objective standpoint, that something is purely objectively just or “moral”. All we can have, if moral FRAMEWORKS. If Oxytocin is what our biology uses to support our supposed moral justifications, than it is indeed a “moral molecule”. No one is claiming that this will always lead to what future generations will consider proper and good. That isn’t what “morality” means in any sort of actual, applicable use.
Clearly they do. But perhaps that’s because they don’t have much clue about the meaning of “ethical.”
Well, yes, but you have to shake it exactly right…
/winks at Edith/ 
I believe there are universals, which transcend both time period and social structure. If morality were wholly determined by either, then there would be no consistency in social or legal taboos. Moreover, it is possible to approximate the morality of a given action/event/law/etc. on purely utilitarian grounds. That is why societies based on slavery or repression are not moral.
Well, only in the solipsistic sense that no one can actually “know” the truth of anything, since everything is filtered through perception. Assuming you’re not religious, there is no single overriding opinion on what constitutes a moral action. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a general consensus. The middle ground between totally subjective and totally objective is pretty large.
Actually, that seems to be exactly what the author is claiming. That understanding and harnessing the effects of oxytocin will lead to a better future. Hence the weird hugging thing and telling people you love them.
I was just going to chime in that I thought the headline said “Oxycontin.” Then there was @WalterPlinge’s comment that looked like “the government gasses us to increase oxycontin levels”
Admittedly, my mind read “oxycontin” the first time through, too.
Morality can be argued (though again I’m not sure I agree with this) to not be WHOLLY determined by either, but it can’t be argued, in any way I can determine, to actually transcend either. You basically say it right here:
[quote=“WalterPlinge, post:25, topic:41107”]
Assuming you’re not religious, there is no single overriding opinion on what constitutes a moral action.[/quote]
Saying that there are “universals” is the same as saying there’s a capital-G “God”. You can say it, and believe it with a faith-like belief, but that’s all you can do.
My biggest beef here is the statement that without “universals” somehow written into the stars, there would be no consistency in moral frameworks. But that’s completely bogus. There are obvious consistencies within the makeup of different cultures and societies, and this can easily, in turn, be reflected in similarities within moral frameworks. Especially notable is that moral frameworks between cultures match up more and more as cultures begin to mirror one another. That’s why you can have similar - but still distinctive - moral frameworks between modern day Japan and the USA, because our cultures are not that radically different within the range of differences that could exist. But N. and S. Korea are night and day, because their cultures are night and day.
Yes, but “utilitarian” to which social structure? What is defined as “utilitarian” absolutely depends on the time and place - the details. There is no universal “utility” to attack a problem that works for all times and all places.
Even if you want to pick the low hanging fruit of “murder/killing” as being an obvious concern for all human cultures everywhere because obviously we all share the concern of life and death no matter the time and place, the details of what constitutes moral killing and immoral killing has never been absolute. The need for having a moral framework on killing in human societies may be universal (at least unless we fancifully got rid of death as an issue), but the moral framework itself is not. We can’t even agree on this from state to state within the USA. My neighbor is unlikely to agree with me, right here, right now. Where is the universal in this? There is none.
Says you, here and now. This sounds an awful lot like you believe the moral framework as it exists and is best understood in your time period and within your personal cultural context(s) (can be more than one culture here, obviously) is the one that is now understood to be universally moral, throughout history. I mean, of COURSE you judge history by your own current moral framework, and aim for a future that fits it as well. But this hardly makes anything universal, it just makes you a believer in your own (or at least modern humanity’s collective) moral infallibility.
Yes, and that’s what I mentioned in my first comment - that the article claims that there is no motivation to be good - you have to go actively BE “good” in order to begin getting addicted to the feeling. The author’s suggestions are a little hippy dippy/simplistic/pick your term, but the general thrust makes sense and is not “utter shit”, which is the entire argument we started with.
The two are almost entirely different. It is the contrast between observing a phenomenon and trying to explain it. Saying “god wills it so” is not the same as saying “this kind of thing tends to happen most of the time”.
This is pretty much what I’m saying, if what you mean by “consistencies within the makeup” is “all human beings are the same on some fundamental level”.
If people are happy, then you don’t have to figure out “the details”. Impoverished, starving, enslaved, etc. people are not happy. In that sense, utility is universal.
I am not asking for the details. I do not care about the legal status of the death penalty or what constitutes justified killing. The precept “murder is wrong” has a great many qualifiers, which vary depending on the time/place/culture/individual/etc. However, it is still universally held in one form or another.
Uh. I’m not really sure what the argument is here. That slavery and repression are moral? That I only judge them to be immoral because they contradict the contemporary social paradigm or because of my unique perspective on the subject?
Societies that exploit their own members tend to make those people unhappy. Eventually that leads to reform or collapse. As we (i.e. humans) gradually build up awareness and knowledge, we understand these things. We make our societies more inclusive and make more people less unhappy. In that sense, we become more “moral”. That’s what progress means. It’s an ongoing process.
Again, taking the entire scientific portion of the article at face value, I have pointed out that you don’t have to actively be “good”, but you only have to believe you are being good. Most people do that anyway, regardless of the effects of their actions. My original complaint was not with the correlation between oxytocin and returning kindness, but with the conclusions Zak draws from this correlation. He wants oxytocin to be the answer to a problem far more complex than he makes it out to be.
Saying something is universal is not the same as saying it “tends to happen most of the time”. A universal is universal, it’s absolute. If there’s discrepancy, then obviously it can’t be universal. If you’re arguing that something happening more often than not is proof of the existence of universals, that’s also a huge leap of faith based logic - nothing in fact proves this, or even hints at it.
No, I mean that humans FACE certain similar obstacles in life across different cultures, and therefore similarities within moral frameworks exist. Morality is predicated on time and place, the details, not ethereal universals write in the stars.
But what is circumstances dictate that a group must be enslaved to keep from starving? Happiness can only exist on a scale of what’s possible at the given time and place. Changes in circumstances allow for changes in morality, not vice versa.
The definition of “murder” varies, so the details absolutely matter. You can’t just say “murder” and mean anything you want and then say all the laws about “murder” across different times and places show similarity. Murder is just a term. If the definition varies, there is no universal.
Define “exploit”. What does that consist of? It varies depending on time and place. Plenty of certain kinds of exploitation have survived and thrived, while others have not.
Progress is simply moving forward and evolving, not necessarily becoming more moral in a universal context, but merely in an immediate context - as morality shifts, so too does how a culture progresses, to match it. Time and place.
Says the guy trying to simplify morality to universal utilitarian concerns? Funny.
That sounds like a semantic argument to me, since your definition precludes the existence of universals altogether. Nothing in life is 100% anything. People are illogical and inconsistent. Scientific experiments do not give the same results every single time. Shit’s complicated. I still think it’s worth trying to figure out/formulate governing principles behind concepts like morality, rather than just saying it’s all subjective.
If you don’t want to call the similarities you refer to “universals”, then don’t. You can call them trends or patterns or “coincidentals” or whatever. I’m fine with that, as long as we’re referring to the same thing.
It involves killing people without justification? One can argue about what “without justification” means, but it’s weird to say general prohibitions against wanton killing aren’t universal/almost universal in human societies.
To treat someone poorly/unfairly to accomplish one’s agenda? See: slavery, wage slavery, child labor, etc. I’m not really arguing that exploitation doesn’t exist in modern societies. I’m saying that it is immoral, even from a utilitarian standpoint.
Moving forward where? Evolving to what end? I’ve pointed out that human societies progress from a utilitarian perspective (happiness for the greatest number of people, stability, order, etc). How does morality shift? Does it do so arbitrarily? I’ve posited that there are “trends” ( since you seem to dislike the word “universal”).
Have you considered sticking to the argument instead of improvising? It’ll work out better in the long run, I guarantee.
Oh, right, because when someone points out that a “universal” isn’t what you’re saying it is, it’s a semantic argument, not you being wrong. Okay. … Not.
Whether moral consistencies are actually universal or simply there are consistencies within large but nowhere near all groups, is critical to your argument. If it’s the latter, I haven’t yet seen any argument from you that this somehow makes morality objective or utilitarian beyond time and place, you just keep saying that it does.
I’ve never said it’s all subjective, I even specifically said it wasn’t back near the beginning of our argument:
“…while there is more to morality (or justice) than pure subjectivity/relativity, I also think there is more to these things than pure objectivity. Kind of like quantum mechanics, there’s no such thing as morality without participants/observers, and as soon as you have participants/observers you can’t determine morality without understanding the relative positions.”
Try to keep track.
But my entire argument is the fluidity of morality via time and place, which you’re arguing against. If there are no universals, but merely “coincidental” or whatever that correlate with time and place, what exactly are you arguing?
No, it’s not weird. What does “wanton killing” mean if you’re not going to define “without justification”? The point being that there’s no way to express the morality of killing between people without using qualifiers and explicitly defining the qualifiers, and these qualifiers and definitions do not align between peoples. No person is actually “against killing”. People and peoples are only “against (fill in the blank) killing” and this flies in the face of your view of meaningful consistencies outside time and place, universals, etc.
Define “poorly/unfairly”, define “agenda”. To someone who’s made a lot of money, it’s unfair to push for higher taxes on them, and tougher regulation in order to accomplish an “agenda” of giving those with less (but who have arguably “earned” less), more. For the record, my moral framework believes that inequality beyond certain reasonable allowances is immoral, because I believe the “earning” of things past a certain threshold has more to do with accessibility than hard work and the concentration of resources in too few hands is a huge detriment to culture as a whole. But your over-simplification of the ease of which terms like “exploit” and how the understanding and application of them is somehow unchanging is just you believing you’re right. That’s fine, but try to recognize it for the bubble it is.
Not arbitrarily, it shifts due to time and place. I’m honestly not sure what you’re not getting here. You seem to sometimes argue that people’s morality is utilitarian in nature, yet you seem resistant to the concept that utilitarian details (time and place) have to change first before morality does.
That is definitely sticking to the argument, or rather pointing out your bizarre inconsistencies. You claim morality to be complex, yet your entire position is an attempt to simplify it to universals (or conincidentals, whatever, the term doesn’t matter, only your meaning, which aligns with the dictionary definition of “universals”). That comes across as someone without a tight grasp on what they’re even trying to argue.
So - conversely the concept of a war-like alien race who derives pleasure from psychopathic traits could exist?
I always dismissed the idea of an alien invasion, because someone advanced enough to visit us wouldn’t need anything we have. Unless their motivation boils down to kicking over ant hills and kicking puppies for fun…
I can prove it, too. And have done, many times. Baruch Spinoza did it long before I did.
If you want to prove God doesn’t exist, you have to start by pre-defining “God” as something that you already know cannot be proven to exist (like YHWH or Allah, for example) and circular logic isn’t a valid argument.
But when we use the definition of God that results when you cancel out all the discrepancies between the claims of all the religions (i.e. God can’t be invisible, or have exactly six arms or exactly one penis, because only certain specific religious philosophies claim that; but God is greater than anything that is not God, because they all do agree on God’s primacy) you’ll end up with pantheism or panentheism.
And since pantheism says you are God - as is everything else you experience - you can reach out your finger any time and physically touch the living body of God. And because you know you exist (because you can ask the question; thanks Descartes!) therefore God exists.
Argument from the basis that God’s existence is unprovable simply cannot be valid until you define which God you’re talking about - the Internet’s global, and not confined to provincial WASP concepts of deity.
I can expound more, although it’d probably bore us both. Sorry about that. But hopefully you can see that I can definitively prove that my God exists - as can any pantheist.
Uh. What? This started with my reference to a part of your post. You replied:
Then there was some irrelevant bit about “ethereal universals”, which had nothing to do with my actual argument. I dunno. Maybe you wanted me to provide irrefutable proof of some ineffable, absolute divine objective morality, ignoring my point that all/nearly all people have certain general moral precepts in common. Or I thought maybe we were using different words to refer to the same thing.
What are we even arguing about here?
I’m not really sure what you’re talking about. The part of my post you quoted was in reference to your distaste for the word “universal”. I said that you can use whatever word you want to refer to the concept I (both of us?) described. I gave several possible options, in the hope that one could be mutually agreed upon.
Ignoring that the first sentence is not actually true, people are in general against murder (“wanton” e.g. “unprovoked” killing). There are qualifiers one can add to that (e.g. some people think killing enemy combatants in times of war is ample provocation or killing in self-defense/to save lives), but the general precept against killing is still a recurring theme in all/most human societies. You may treat it as a collection of vaguely-related exceptional cases, but I do not. It has been encoded historically in secular and religious law. People can generally agree that, say, the Holocaust was a bad thing.
Considering there are many more poor people being exploited than wealthy people being “exploited” (and with a very large difference in degree), I believe you are being willfully obtuse. If not, then please define “reasonable allowances” as it pertains to the undefined concept of “inequality”. It would also be nice if you would explain what you mean by “hard work”, “accessibility”, “detriment to culture”, and “too few hands”.
I would also, once again, like to reiterate here that I am referring to the general trend in the application of the term “exploit”, rather than some absolute concept that doesn’t really exist (again refer back to my post about the existence of absolutes).
I am presenting the utilitarian outlook on morality as a counterargument to your claim that it is impossible to objectively define. You want utility to be arbitrarily dependent (ignoring consistent human responses to external stimuli) on time/place, presumably because that would prove you right. However, I am asking that you tell me what the words “progress” and “evolving” actually mean to you. I am assuming you don’t agree that morality is becoming more complex, as human societies develop ethics/become more inclusive/etc.
My entire position on what? These are two different (albeit related) subjects. One is about my conception of morality and one is about my opinion of Mr. Zak’s conclusions concerning oxytocin. You somehow decided that my views on the former invalidated my views on the latter and posted a snarky one-liner instead of actually responding. That comes across as petty.
Yeah, thanks, but I in no way brought up any need to prove God doesn’t exist a la trendy Atheism challenges. I said - correctly - that a capital-G “God” cannot be proven to exist similar to how universals cannot be proven to exist. Generally speaking there is no capital-G “God” unless it’s a god supposedly shared (a god that is everyone’s god, regardless that they do or don’t believe), this is the same concept of a universal. You can prove whatever you’d like about YOUR god You can prove nothing about god beyond yourself. Same with “universals”. Hence the need for everything you just wrote to be under a “pantheist” banner. There isn’t just one for everybody, regardless of some people believing there is. Maybe “Capital ‘G’ God” is a term you’d take issue with in this use, but I don’t know of any other.
And t be perfectly honest, I don’t agree with any part of Spinoza’s view here, but regardless, nothing I’ve written is in conflict with it. Also, Descartes has been, imo, thoroughly rebuked by Kirkegaard and Hume since him day. But this is all a very different argument for a very different thread.
Okay, maybe this is clearer: my argument is that if your “universal” is simply a “general” commonality/precept/pick your term, then the way in which you want to use the existence of such general whatevers doesn’t hold up. “Ethereal universals” is just referring to what you’re trying to use “general commonalities” to be, far as I can tell. A commonality does not, in any way, inform the specifics of a moral framework without the cultural time and place details. It simply doesn’t. Commonalities tell us which topics need to be covered in a moral framework, I can agree with that, but it does not tell us HOW they will be dealt it, which is frankly what morality actually is - the how, not the what. We might, when communicating to one another, use shorthand and say “killing is wrong” or “Sex is evil” etc etc. but we don’t actually mean anything so straight forward or simple. Like, ever. This is only a commonality of focus, not purpose, or belief, or morals.
(Note: I use all caps sparingly but occasionally for emphasis. I like it better than italics. I’m not shouting, but you can respond to it however you like).
People here and now can, yes. Though certainly there’s a meaty minority who do not. Now try another similar question like: we can all generally agree that bombing Hiroshima was a bad thing. But we all don’t agree on that. Do we agree it’s a tragedy? Yes. A morally bad thing? Go give that a try.
You seem to equate large majorities = moral absolutes. But that is, as I’ve said before, just you believing that you and yours in the here and now are morally correct. Everyone always thinks that way, but we’ve never all believed the same thing.
Exactly, one would have to define all of those things to even be understood by another person. We don’t even disagree within our own moral frameworks and we can’t understand wtf the other is saying. The “general” belief that “exploitation” is “bad” is meaningless. Because then you hav to go out, case by case, and argue what actually IS “exploitation”, of whom, how, to what extent, etc etc. General commonalities do not in any way = moral agreement.
Then you have no point. Or you’re still trying to argue that general commonalities somehow create moral universals. But they don’t.
Arbitrarily? How the heck can utilitarian anything NOT be dependent on time and place? Time and place define the utilities at hand. What resources people have, what protections, what kind of lives, what obstacles, what dangers. There is no utility removed form time and space. That’s absurd. If including time and place into the argument proves me right, then reality proves me right.
Progress is progression, you’d like to only call progress something that is “better than” what preceded it, which isn’t really incorrect (it’s part of progress), but it’s subjective. Certain value judgments can be objective - better handling of resources, wealth, etc. - but morality and happiness I don’t believe can be, no. I have no idea what your second question here is about or even really asking.
Snarky, sure, but not petty. They’re not two different subjects - your attempt to define morality via universals aka general commonalities (as you now like to call them) is a simplification of the very morality you also say her is “complex”. Both are your stated views on morality, you didn’t say your views on Mr. Zak’s conclusions were “complex”, you said morality was “complex”, after just spending a very long argument with me trying to simplify it into universals/general principles. I do think that’s sincerely telling double speak.
If human responses to questions of morality are even vaguely consistent, then they do. When people say “killing is wrong” they don’t actually mean “killing is right”. They mean “killing is wrong, except for such and such a reason”. Those reasons differ, but those are the specifics - not the general. Among the vast majority of people, the intersection of all of the qualifiers is not empty.
Why would you counter my example with a non-example? You claim that there are no trends, so how is the existence of a non-trend going to prove anything?
As to the second part of that quote, I have already stated that there are no absolutes in the strict sense of that word. There are no absolutes in anything. Ever (all generalities are bad). The world is so complicated that a deterministic approach to life doesn’t really work, so all we’re left with are probabilities and trends.
No, the intent of my statement was, in fact, the opposite. People generally agree on what words mean. Sometimes they don’t in the specifics, and then clarifications are in order. However, the words we use are generally approximate to each other. My understanding of the word “inequality” probably differs from yours, but it is similar enough that when you say “inequality” I don’t take you to mean “banana”. In that sense, the meaning is universal.
Arbitrarily. Meaning “not subject to any kind of pattern”. You’re looking at the way people respond to oppression or enslavement and saying there is no consistent or patterned response. Then you claim there is no consistency or pattern even in the way “oppression” and “enslavement” are defined. That’s what I mean by arbitrary.
You’re also really gung-ho about creating a false dichotomy between there being no trends at all and the existence of concrete absolutes. I say that there are universal trends, and you claim I say morality (or utility) are completely independent of time and space.
Actually, from your perspective, as I understand it, there should be no objective value judgments. “Handling of resources” and “wealth” should be concepts dependent on time and place. That is, what constitutes wealth varies. A deficit in resources at one place makes them more valuable, while a surplus at another makes them less so. As different resources become more or less important, then the “handling” improves or deteriorates (although knowledge still tends to accrue). The only progress you seem to recognize is the passage of time. Hence, I was wondering why you used certain words, which might imply, if not an end goal, then an increase in complexity.
Alright, let’s look at it then. Here is my post, for reference:
I have no idea why my opinion on universal/almost universal trends in human morality makes it somehow not complex. That does not logically follow. Moreover, the problem I was referring to was how to make people kinder/better at reciprocating kindness/not assholes to each other/etc. This entire discussion kind of went off the rails even before that, since it was originally supposed to be about Zak’s research into oxytocin.
Um, nope.
Yes, they do. See below.
They mean “killing is wrong, except for such and such a reason when killing is right.” You see?
Saying “killing is wrong, except for such and such a reason”, is the same as saying “killing is right, except for such and such a reason”. If you’re drawing lines within the realm of “killing”, one side has to be the other side. So saying that only some killing is wrong, is precisely the same as saying some killing is right. So the details are ALL that matter
.
Sure, but by this logic all shared worldviews/opinions by any two or more people = proof of common morality. Yet virtually ever exact opposite opinion is shared by two or more people as well. Which is the general commonality for humanity as a whole? Are you simply arguing majority rule? What about all the majority opinions from the past that are now considered immoral by the modern majority? There’s no proof here for anything except shared morality of the times, not shared morality for all times.
It’s neither a non-example nor a non-trend, nice try. You specifically laid The Holocaust out there as an example of general commonality of morality in regards to killing. Not only did I point out that not all humanity actually agrees on this (and certainly there was a lot of non-agreement of how “bad” the killing of the Jews was back when it was happening) but Hiroshima was then put out there as another big-big example of killing, but here there is the opposite moral consensus (it wasn’t a bad thing, morally), though the fact that it was a targeted mass killing of non-combatant (aka innocents) is completely similar to the Holocaust. Yet somehow we don’t think the same of it. Because details, dude.
Yes, I’m beginning to realize that you seem to think my disagreeing with you is because I’m not understanding you, but sorry, I do realize the INTENT of your statement. I’m simply disagreeing with it, and going further to show how what you’re saying is arguably more in favor of my stance than your own.
But we’re not talking about whether people think you’re saying “banana” or “inequality”. We’re arguing whether when people say “inequality” if they will then agree on what falls under that rubric. And they don’t agree. You can say “inequality is bad!”. Yeah, okay, but then you’ll say “and X is inequality so it’s bad!” to which the other person says “No, X isn’t inequality, so it isn’t bad” and which point you do not, in fact, have any commonality. If “inequality” actually means something different to another person, you’re not agreeing with each other, you both simply have the same word to use for things you find to be “bad”. But if the meaning of that word differs, and if the meaning of all the words you use to define that words differs, then bam, no commonality.
Oooookay, but that isn’t what you said. You said:
“You want utility to be arbitrarily dependent (ignoring consistent human
responses to external stimuli) on time/place, presumably because that
would prove you right.”
Grammar, man, grammar. You said I myself wanted utility to be arbitrarily dependent on time and place. Which would mean I wanted the dependency to be arbitrary (there being no pattern to the dependency). I hope you’re not arguing that, because that’s beyond absurd. What I guess you meant to say was: “You want utility to be dependent on time and place only in arbitrary patterns”.
Which, no, I don’t want that. See below.
I’m saying it would have to be for there to be universals, yes. I understand you don’t think so, and so you think this isn’t what you’re saying, but it’s inherent in the concept of any universal. You can’t just brush it aside and still have a genuine argument regarding universals.
Also, no, I’m not claiming any false dichotomy. You are. I do not believe that trends don’t exist. I simply believe that the existence of trends doesn’t magically support your argument, just because you say they do. You say trends prove the existence of universals, or commonalities that are in effect being used in your arguments like universals. I’m arguing that universals are extreme absolutes, and trends or commonalities are not the same, and certainly don’t prove the existence of such. I’ve never once claimed there are “no trends at all”, or anything like it. You’re the one deciding that if I don’t allow the existence of trends to support your argument of universals, then I’m arguing trends don’t exist. That’s YOUR false dichotomy, buddy. I’m arguing entirely for everything in-between.
They are. There are no UNIVERSAL objective value judgements. But there are objective value judgments at any given time and place, just like anything at any given time and place.
I’m still not following you on this “complexity” bit. You’re obviously reading something in my words that I’m not intending, so I’m not even aware of it, so I have no idea how to even respond to it.
Sure it does. Universal trends are a vast simplification than the idea of there being no universal trends. Trends? Yes, I believe in those. “Universal trends”? No. When you decide that trends prove the existence of universals, you are arguing for a much more simplified version of morality than any version that would not recognize this.
Umm, yep.
I guess it depends on your perspective? Considering there are people who believe killing is wrong under any circumstance, I doubt yours is going to get much traction. I’m not really sure how groups of people would even attempt to codify morality (in law, for example) if there were not a general consensus that murder is wrong, let alone have there be any consistency between the attempts.
Uh. No. That is not good logic, since it would imply any two politicians are sufficient to pass laws. I have no idea why you’re bringing up all majority opinions from the past, when I’m referring to a single specific trend. I also have no idea why you’re restricting yourself to a specific time period.
We are arguing about whether people define the same words in a consistent way. I say they do, you say they don’t. Ignoring that I have no idea how it is possible to communicate with anyone if you have that outlook, I’d like to reiterate that consistent does not mean “the same”.
I keep adding the qualifiers “almost all” or “most” to my statements (maybe I should quote my post about things not being 100% certain again) and you keep disregarding them, to focus on claims concerning absolutes. Also, this is neither here nor there, but there is not an opposite moral consensus (except maybe among conservative/older Americans) concerning the Hiroshima bombing. There is a mixed reaction.
If your claim is that there are no trends in morality, and I provide an example of a trend, then you need to disprove my example (which you have not done, despite what you claim). Providing an example of something that is not a trend does not logically support your position, especially if the two examples are not equivalent.
Seriously, dude? Are we going to have this argument too? I’ve already clarified my statement, and what you wrote means the same thing as what I wrote (i.e. that there are no patterns in the dependence of utility; assuming that “arbitrary patterns” means “no patterns”, so that it actually makes sense). The statement should be: "You want utility to only depend on time and place and to not follow any patterns transcending them (i.e. to be arbitrary).
Wow, we’re really though the looking glass here. You keep denying that we’re saying similar things in different ways, and then accusing me of disagreeing with claims I have already made.
You’re so fixated on the word “universal” that you have consistently ignored every part of my posts clarifying that absolutes can’t actually exist, so that large-scale trends (yet another term you can use instead of “universal”) are as close as we are going to get. Do you want me to quote those again for you? I will oblige.
Do you really want to engage in a pointless semantic argument over the meaning of the word “universal” after you have so emphatically stated that words mean different things to different people?
Yes, I gathered. The point was that using words like “evolution” or “progress” already presuppose some kind of trend in development. However, if you deny the existence of large-scale trends in evolution, then I can see how the complexity bit would be confusing.
I’m beginning to suspect that you have very serious problems with logic. Statements concerning complexity or simplicity can be relative (something is simpler than something else) or absolute (morality is complex issue). If I say that “morality is complex”, and you say “but universals (or whatever word you want to use) make it simpler; it would be more complex without universals” those do not, in fact, contradict one another. Furthermore, as I have already pointed out, I wasn’t even referring to the complexity of morality itself.
You took the chance to snipe at something without addressing it directly. This entire argument is a massive derail from discussion of Zak’s claims about oxytocin.
To continue the train analogy, I’m basically out of steam here. I am sick of having to post and re-post quotes from my earlier responses because you consistently ignore them. If you want to debate something we generally agree on, in order to win that one tiny sliver of middle ground between our two positions, then do so alone. I went into this derail to try to clarify my own views on morality, but an argument that is not dialectic is worthless. Unless you have something specific to say about oxytocin or what Zak thinks of it, I’m done.
