Pomp

I was going to address the points made by bd-from-kg and, in fact, started typing out a pretty lengthy response, but pug846 already said most of what I wanted to say and I have a feeling that bd and I would just end up rehashing quite a bit of old material, so I'm going to shut up for now and watch the two of you discuss this. If you don't mind, I'll chime in if and when I have something new to say.

The one point I would like to raise, however, is that there seems to me to be a qualitative difference between principles such as Occam's Razor and moral principles. The former are guidelines for forming descriptive statements and the latter are guidelines for forming prescriptive statements. I'm not sure how important this distinction will be for the urposes of this discussion.

David Gould

If the survival of the human consciousness is the basis for objective morality, how can a conscious non human unaware of the existence of humans be moral?

What about an artifical consciousness? Does that have to follow the objective standard in order to be considered moral?

Or is it moral for a non human consciousness to act in ways that do not contribute to the survival of the human consciousness - even in fact be detrimental to it if it is trying to maintain its own survival?

If the standard does not apply to all conscious beings, in what way is it objective?

If you alter the standard and remove 'human' from the equation, you end up with conscious beings must do all they can to preserve consciousness.

However, implied in there is the idea that the best sort of consciousness to preserve is that which preserves consciousness best.

This may not be human consciousness (we may be nastier than other consciousnesses). Thus, it may be objectively moral to damage the human consciousness in order to preserve a more worthy consciousness (more worthy under the supposedly objective standard).

Or is there something that I am missing? Is all consciousness, no matter what, of equal objective value?

echidna

To the objectivist maybe no, but to the subjectivist yes, equally of zero objective value.

echidna

A question for the materialists and the reductionists :

If consciousness and morality are purely materialist entities, able to be explained in reductionist terms, then presumably it should also be possible to produce some level of objective materialist rules for morality.

Is this true ?

BTW, David as I see it, you’re still stuck that no one can prove the existence of consciousness, artificial or otherwise, so how do you demonstrate that I should protect a machine ?

Tom Piper

pug846,

I told you what I meant by 'objective facts',
In addition, I gave you examples of action-guiding facts that are objective by this/these explications (as far as they go). Moreover, these explications characterize, as far as they go, our notion of objective moral facts. They do not say everything there is to say about moral facts, to be sure.

Now, why don't you flush (sic) out your notion of objective moral facts, showing what you think has been left out.

I admit no such thing, and I don't know why you think I have admitted it.

I had said, To which you responded, This is a strange question. If you are to play Monopoly, then you have to follow the rules of Monopoly. No one will make you play Monopoly. Similarly with the traffic laws-- if you are to follow the traffic laws, then you must obey these laws. To do otherwise is to disobey the laws, whether you believe in these laws or not.

If you are to behave morally (according to the morality game), then you will obey the laws that have been set down by 'the means by which the laws have been put into place'. No one will make you obey these laws, but if you don't obey them then you aren't playing the morality game.

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant-- it certainly looked as though you said that even if the conditions were as I suggested (in the passage above with the quote from my post--'If there is a means by which moral laws...), you could decide against following the laws. And you thought this showed something significant. I don't see anything significant in what you have offered, but, as i said, maybe I misunderstood you.

Tom

David Gould

How can I demonstrate that you should protect a person?

The answer: I can't.

Thus, there are no objective moral values.

With regard to your question on consciousnes to materialists, why do you draw that conclusion?

Just because consciousness arises does not mean that consciousness or anything associated with it is objectively 'good'.

I would like to see some sort of logical progression assuming material consciousness and ending with objective morality before I commented further.

Ms. Siv

What we have are objective moral strategies - or ESS (Evolutionarily Stable Strategies).
The method is game theory. If you know the population and its characteristics (predominantly hawk or dove etc) then it will tell you the strategy that will be the most stable .

- Sivakami.

David Gould

Doesn't that just give you which strategy will make the population stable? How does that give a moral fact? Where do you get the idea that a stable population is objectively good?

tronvillain

It explains why we have the moral tendencies we do, but I don't think it provides "objective moral facts."

Ms. Siv

But why should objective facts/strategies do that ? They just give you information to make better decisions with, thats all.
Science can never give you any ought-to, just what-is and what-if's.

- Sivakami.