What is a Moral Framework and System?

[psycho]

I ask what is the rationality of attributing moral responsibility to an agent if not all the factors that make up his will are under his control (regardless of what society does)

There doesn't have to be any rationality!

Because not all the factors that make up their will are under their control.

And this does not answer my question.

You are not owed an answer.

Society can choose not to answer my question but society would be acting absurd if it considers that they answered it.

Society is made up of agents, like you. If not all factors that make up your will aren't under your control, why do you think other people's circumstances are any different?

My question points to rational justification. Society can act irrationally (reason is not what decides human actions) and still I can ask what is its justification (irrational or rational).

The justification is... there isn't any. People are just acting in accord with the uncontrollable factors that make up their will.

You edited my quote and added a phrase that I didn't write. That is dishonest (Speaking of moral responsibility and consequences).

I am not dishonest. I am just not under control of all the factors that make up my will

Sadly bad faith kills all conversations.

[Skepdick]

Sadly bad faith kills all conversations.

Then do like I do! Converse on good faith.

I am pointing out fundamental problems with your line of reasoning.

Moral responsibility is attributed to one agent by another. Lets call them the Attribute and Attributor so we can differentiate.

If not all factors that make up the Attribute's will are not under his control, why do you assume the Attributor's circumstance is any different?

If both are simply reacting to their evolutionary programming without engaging autonomous reason then what exactly you asking?

[psycho]

Sadly bad faith kills all conversations.

Then do like I do! Converse on good faith.

I am pointing out fundamental problems with your line of reasoning.

Moral responsibility is attributed to one agent by another. Lets call them the Attribute and Attributor so we can differentiate.

If not all factors that make up the Attribute's will are not under his control, why do you assume the Attributor's circumstance is any different?

If both are simply reacting to their evolutionary programming without engaging autonomous reason then what exactly you asking?

I do not hold the lion who ate his tamer morally responsible.

From then on I place him in a situation that prevents him from continuing to eat tamers.

But I don't judge him morally. That would be foolish.


This is my last response to your comments.

[Skepdick]

I do not hold the lion who ate his tamer morally responsible.

From then on I place him in a situation that prevents him from continuing to eat tamers.

OK, so you don't hold the lion morally responsible but you still took measures to prevent him from eating more tamers.

How is this any different from "I do not hold the murderer who killed his family morally responsible. From then on I place him in a situation that prevents them from continuing to murder people"?

The situation happens to be called prison.

But I don't judge him morally. That would be foolish.

OK, so what does "judging morally" look like in pactice?

What sort of consequences would the lion have endured if you had chosen to hold him morally responsible for eating the tamer?

This is my last response to your comments.

We'll see about that.

[Sculptor]

The claim seems to be a denial of the claim that such a thing could be objective or absolute.

Morality is objective,

SHow me

[Skepdick]

SHow me

Sure.

Please identify and ontologically locate the root cause of this objectively testable/verifiable global and multi-generational phenomenon.

Homicides - Our World in Data 2021-01-29 00-00-38.png (57.14 KiB) Viewed 1685 times

[Veritas Aequitas]

There are no fixed and absolute meanings to words in the field of etymology which is very dynamic. Surely you'll not dispute this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology
The meanings for many words has changed and added with new meanings over time.
Note once a upon a time the word 'gay' = joyful, but its most popular meaning at present is 'homosexuality'.

If you are up to date, the word 'program' which is more popular toward computer programs, has now been used for mental programs of in the brain in recent times.
Even in artificial intelligence the move at present is to understand and mimic how the brain was "programmed" via evolution and nature.

The problem is conceptual.

Programming implies an intentional programmer and a mechanism (non-biological or biological) capable of receiving a list of orders and carrying them out in the order indicated.

This is not a characteristic of human nervous systems.

Metaphor is metaphor.

Note I stated "programmed" in " " which relevant in the context of evolution.

Re 'programmer,' in the case of deliberate brainwashing, there is a programmer and the person being programmed.

What is critical here is the end result is a 'program' comprising codes of 'if x, then Y.'

I believe the above is a problem of semantics.

If we present "murder" as an output as an equation, then we have,
[Human]+ {a + b + c + ...} [inputs] + processes = murder [output]
From the above, 'aggression' is merely one of many variables that are present in the murder equation.
Aggression is not the critical variable.
The critical variable is the 'weakening of the moral inhibitors' in the murder equation.
Without the aggression variable, murder can still happen.
However if we have strong moral inhibitors, murders will not happen.

That is like considering that the grasping ability of the hand is one of the reasons why someone strangles another.

Wrong comparison.

If you kill someone, that is primarily due to the 'weakening of your moral inhibitors' whether you were aggressive in that murder or not is secondary. There are cases where humans kill humans out of love, duty, etc.

I wrote a response to your post somewhere and asked,
'decisions of moral responsibility' to who?
see:
'Vulgar'-Morality versus Morality-Proper
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31903

In morality-proper, a moral agent is not responsible to an external authority but only to his own moral conscience.

Another point is one need to understand the moral situations of humanity, e.g. there was/is so much violence, killing and all sort of evil acts committed by various individuals.
The moral agent's responsibility is to ensure he is not one of those within the statistics of evil people.

As such to better and improve the moral agent's moral conscience and responsibility, one has to understand what is going inside one's brain [the unconscious] and re-program for moral progress.

True, the individual may be ignorant of all of the above and his moral status, thus it is up to other individuals in the know to discuss [like what we are doing at present here] to facilitate moral progress in other individuals.

That does not answer because oneself (anyone) considers himself morally responsible when not all the factors of a decision are known to him (for example: unconscious factors).

I have repeated many times,
within morality-proper there is no question of a moral agent being morally responsible to an external authority, society and others.
As such your point is irrelevant.

Even if a person kill another and is fully aware of all the variables, there is no question of him being morally responsible to anyone. What the person is responsible is to be legally responsible and thus must be accountable to the criminal laws of the land.

If there is to be any question of 'moral responsibility, it is only that the murderer is morally responsible to himself. In this case, he has to understand the unconscious variables within himself.

I understand correlation is definitely not causation.

But note, I have given a sound argument to support my point, i.e. a trend in the reduction of killing and violence is caused by an increase in the average moral competence of humanity.
1. The JUSTIFIED TRUE moral fact and moral standard is,
2. 'no human ought to kill humans'
3. this mean that there should be ZERO killing of humans as the standard.
4. Therefore, if there are a trend of decreasing killing towards ZERO killing, then there would be moral advance or progress.
What is wrong with the above argument?

Re premise 1 note this argument,
There are Moral Facts
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29777

Premise 4 is very evident in the reduction contrast between the present to last 50 years in comparison to the numbers of humans killed via violence and wars during WWII, WWI and prior.
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties.

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
Prior to the above,
it is "claimed" 80 millions of Hindu-Indians were killed during the 1000 years of occupation by SOME Muslims in India.
SOME Muslims also went on a killing spree in other lands.
https://www.politicalislam.com/tears-of-jihad/

There were also many other genocides, and terrible killings and violence where millions were killed.

The decision to kill, when the murderer considered it a convenient solution, is never after an ethical evaluation of the action. That only happens in Russian novels. What humans calculate, when society makes it necessary, is how to avoid consequences.

This is not relevant to my point. I did not refer to any ethical decision nor evaluation.

I do not dispute the decrease in violent solutions to human conflicts (frankly I do not know). I do not see how to observe that data and then ensure that it proves the moral evolution of humanity.

What is the evolutionary mechanism that favors moral improvement?

What I have implied is 'the killing of humans by humans' is a moral issue.
Do you agree with this?
Thus the moral issue is to reduce the number of humans killed.
Therefore it is logical the reduction in the number of humans killed is equivalent to a progress in morality.

The moral function and system within all humans is represented by a complex set of neural mechanisms. I will not go into the precise details of this complex set up.
However as I had mentioned earlier, the empathy system is one of the part of the moral system.
This empathy function is driven by mirror neurons which exist only in the higher animals, some apes and humans, i.e. evidence of evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

[Skepdick]

Programming implies an intentional programmer and a mechanism (non-biological or biological) capable of receiving a list of orders and carrying them out in the order indicated.

That's a narrow conception of programming - it's the deterministic/imperative conception.

It's perfectly possible to program a computer such that the specific choice that will be made at any given point in time is not actually known to the programmer, because the exact choice is determined by the computer at runtime.

This is non-deterministic programming/declarative programming.

[Sculptor]

SHow me

Sure.

Please identify and ontologically locate the root cause of this objectively testable/verifiable global and multi-generational phenomenon.

Homicides - Our World in Data 2021-01-29 00-00-38.png

Show me!!

[Skepdick]

SHow me

Sure.

Please identify and ontologically locate the root cause of this objectively testable/verifiable global and multi-generational phenomenon.

Homicides - Our World in Data 2021-01-29 00-00-38.png

Show me!!

So your strategy is going to be "Show me!!" ? You insist appealing to direct experience? Great! I am stealing it for the counter-attack.

*clears throat*
*adjust bowtie*
*puts on serious face*
*silently laughs at Philosophers*
*farts*
*ENGAGE SMUGNESS*

Show me Gravity!!! No, I am not asking for the EFFECTS of Gravity, you dumb fucking sophist! I want direct experience of Gravity itself!

Show me Gravity !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since we both know you can't deliver the goods, I want you to reject Gravity like you reject Morality.

Let me hear you say it! Proclaim your "stupid" like you aren't stupid!

[psycho]

Note I stated "programmed" in " " which relevant in the context of evolution.

Re 'programmer,' in the case of deliberate brainwashing, there is a programmer and the person being programmed.

What is critical here is the end result is a 'program' comprising codes of 'if x, then Y.'

Associating is not programming or "programming".

Nobody can program a human. One can change the associations that a certain human uses. But that is not programming. It is like changing the contents of a box. The human reacted according to the content of a box and when you change it now he has the same reaction but with respect to the new content.

That is associating, not programming.

One can use associations and triggers to try to manage human behavior. It is like guiding a cow through a maze.

Wrong comparison.

If you kill someone, that is primarily due to the 'weakening of your moral inhibitors' whether you were aggressive in that murder or not is secondary. There are cases where humans kill humans out of love, duty, etc.

In my opinion you are very confused about what Aggression is.

All murder is an aggressive act.

Your clarification that the motive for killing can be love proves my point that aggression is not a factor in killing but the reaction that executes it.

I have repeated many times,
within morality-proper there is no question of a moral agent being morally responsible to an external authority, society and others.
As such your point is irrelevant.

Even if a person kill another and is fully aware of all the variables, there is no question of him being morally responsible to anyone. What the person is responsible is to be legally responsible and thus must be accountable to the criminal laws of the land.

If there is to be any question of 'moral responsibility, it is only that the murderer is morally responsible to himself. In this case, he has to understand the unconscious variables within himself.

What you repeat many times is something other than the subject of my question.

I am not asking why society should consider that its members should be seen as moral entities (I hope it is not attributed to me again that I ask such a thing!).

I ask (fourth or fifth time I express it!) Why should one himself consider himself morally responsible for his actions if he is not fully aware of the factors that form the will that generated that action (Here, although it is difficult, must It should be understood that I am not referring to how the rest of society considers whoever performs the action, but how the agent who performed the action himself considers that these actions have a moral connotation given the aforementioned circumstances).

Don't feel obligated to answer this question. But if you do, don't give it a different meaning than my question implies.

The phrase "he has to understand the unconscious variables within himself" is absurd! If he was aware of these variables before deciding to commit the immoral action, those variables would not be unconscious. If he notices these variables after the action is committed, it is ridiculous to assume that he was in complete control of his will.

This is not relevant to my point. I did not refer to any ethical decision nor evaluation.

That is, do you think people do not morally evaluate their actions before doing them?

What I have implied is 'the killing of humans by humans' is a moral issue.
Do you agree with this?
Thus the moral issue is to reduce the number of humans killed.
Therefore it is logical the reduction in the number of humans killed is equivalent to a progress in morality.

The moral function and system within all humans is represented by a complex set of neural mechanisms. I will not go into the precise details of this complex set up.
However as I had mentioned earlier, the empathy system is one of the part of the moral system.
This empathy function is driven by mirror neurons which exist only in the higher animals, some apes and humans, i.e. evidence of evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

No. That is fallacious. The reduction in the number of murders does not imply a moral improvement in society.

That is:

- Killing humans is a moral issue

- The objective of morality is to reduce the number of humans killed

- If fewer humans are killed, morality must have improved

Aristotle must have rolled his eyes.

I think I have misunderstood you. I had understood that in your opinion, humans choose their actions according to a moral framework .

Do you consider that what improves is the moral framework? Or is it in compliance with the moral framework where you notice progress?

If you consider that the human nervous system has built in inhibitors of certain behaviors, it is absurd that later you suppose that humans have free will and have the ability to choose morally.

What is incomprehensible to me is that your position implies that whoever abides by his neurological restrictions is moral and whoever does not abide by them is immoral. Presenting as possible a scenario where the human will can choose to respect or not its neurological restrictions.

Calling moral those who respect their neurological restrictions and immoral those who do not respect them is only possible if one completely changes the meaning of "moral".

[Skepdick]

No. That is fallacious. The reduction in the number of murders does not imply a moral improvement in society.

What would imply moral improvement then? If you can't even agree that murder is immoral, and therefore about morality then what do you even mean by "morality"?

Calling moral those who respect their neurological restrictions and immoral those who do not respect them is only possible if one completely changes the meaning of "moral".

What do you think THE meaning of "moral" is?

[bahman]

No. That is fallacious. The reduction in the number of murders does not imply a moral improvement in society.

What would imply moral improvement then? If you can't even agree that murder is immoral, and therefore about morality then what do you even mean by "morality"?

Calling moral those who respect their neurological restrictions and immoral those who do not respect them is only possible if one completely changes the meaning of "moral".

What do you think THE meaning of "moral" is?

Yes. I have the same questions.

[Skepdick]

Calling moral those who respect their neurological restrictions and immoral those who do not respect them is only possible if one completely changes the meaning of "moral".

Also... arb question but. Do you draw a distinction between being moral and acting morally?

A human can act immorally without being immoral, because (im)morality is not an intrinsic property.

This notion of intrinsic properties is pretty wonky artefact of language. You are not not intrinsically anything - it's just the way we speak about the world.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Note I stated "programmed" in " " which relevant in the context of evolution.

Re 'programmer,' in the case of deliberate brainwashing, there is a programmer and the person being programmed.

What is critical here is the end result is a 'program' comprising codes of 'if x, then Y.'

Associating is not programming or "programming".

Nobody can program a human. One can change the associations that a certain human uses. But that is not programming. It is like changing the contents of a box. The human reacted according to the content of a box and when you change it now he has the same reaction but with respect to the new content.

That is associating, not programming.

One can use associations and triggers to try to manage human behavior. It is like guiding a cow through a maze.

Associating is rewiring the neural connections in the brain and that is programming.

You need to do a search in google re human programming, e.g.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-divisio ... rogramming
Do more research in google and show me why what is commonly term "human-programming" is not a case of 'programming'.

Wrong comparison.

If you kill someone, that is primarily due to the 'weakening of your moral inhibitors' whether you were aggressive in that murder or not is secondary. There are cases where humans kill humans out of love, duty, etc.

In my opinion you are very confused about what Aggression is.

All murder is an aggressive act.

Your clarification that the motive for killing can be love proves my point that aggression is not a factor in killing but the reaction that executes it.

You were the one who insist all murder is an aggressive act.
The killing due to 'love' is also murder, e.g. there are a lot of cases, i.e. the killing of one's children and spouse when one's life has failed to support them due to financial troubles and other reasons. This is due to desperation and stupidity, not aggression as defined.

You are the one who is confused about what Aggression is,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression

In an interdisciplinary perspective, aggression is regarded as “an ensemble of mechanism formed during the course of evolution in order to assert oneself, relatives or friends against others, to gain or to defend resources (ultimate causes) by harmful damaging means [...] These mechanisms are often motivated by emotions like fear, frustration, anger, feelings of stress, dominance or pleasure (proximate causes) [...] Sometimes aggressive behavior serves as a stress relief or a subjective feeling of power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression

There is no mention of 'love' in the above.
There are many other reasons other than aggression as defined above, on why someone killed humans which is legally murder.

What you repeat many times is something other than the subject of my question.

I am not asking why society should consider that its members should be seen as moral entities (I hope it is not attributed to me again that I ask such a thing!).

I ask (fourth or fifth time I express it!)
Why should one himself consider himself morally responsible for his actions if he is not fully aware of the factors that form the will that generated that action
(Here, although it is difficult, must It should be understood that I am not referring to how the rest of society considers whoever performs the action, but how the agent who performed the action himself considers that these actions have a moral connotation given the aforementioned circumstances).

Don't feel obligated to answer this question. But if you do, don't give it a different meaning than my question implies.

The phrase "he has to understand the unconscious variables within himself" is absurd! If he was aware of these variables before deciding to commit the immoral action, those variables would not be unconscious. If he notices these variables after the action is committed, it is ridiculous to assume that he was in complete control of his will.

I don't understand your question.

To me, re the subject of morality, there is no question of any individual needing to feel morally responsible for his actions.

This is not relevant to my point. I did not refer to any ethical decision nor evaluation.

That is, do you think people do not morally evaluate their actions before doing them?

There is some degrees of evaluation in the moral sense or morality proper, but that is secondary.

In morality-proper what is primary is a moral competent person's action is activated spontaneously without evaluation.
It is just like a highly skilled professional tennis player who had trained for years and repeated his actions a million times in training that when he compete on the tennis court his actions to win are done spontaneously.

But a moral competent person do evaluate the consequences of his actions against the moral standard and take preventive steps of correct and improve upon future actions which are to be activated spontaneously.

What I have implied is 'the killing of humans by humans' is a moral issue.
Do you agree with this?
Thus the moral issue is to reduce the number of humans killed.
Therefore it is logical the reduction in the number of humans killed is equivalent to a progress in morality.

The moral function and system within all humans is represented by a complex set of neural mechanisms. I will not go into the precise details of this complex set up.
However as I had mentioned earlier, the empathy system is one of the part of the moral system.
This empathy function is driven by mirror neurons which exist only in the higher animals, some apes and humans, i.e. evidence of evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

No. That is fallacious. The reduction in the number of murders does not imply a moral improvement in society.

That is:

- Killing humans is a moral issue

- The objective of morality is to reduce the number of humans killed

- If fewer humans are killed, morality must have improved

Aristotle must have rolled his eyes.

You are the one who present the above syllogistically, I did not.

I presented the above in narrative form and each premise require more detailed explanations,

• - Killing humans is a moral issue [as verified and justified within a moral FSK]
  
  - The objective of morality is to reduce the number of humans killed to ZERO
  
  - If fewer humans are killed, morality must have improved

You did not explain why the above do not follow.

If prior to 1950, 500 million humans were killed via violence,
in the period, 1900-1950, 100 million humans were killed via violence,
then in the period 1951 to 2021, 20 million humans were killed via violence,
surely there is improvements in terms of numbers killed,
because killing is a moral element [verified and justified], thus morality has improved.
Morality in this case can be measured via the average Moral Quotient [MQ] as in IQ.

I think I have misunderstood you. I had understood that in your opinion, humans choose their actions according to a moral framework .

Do you consider that what improves is the moral framework? Or is it in compliance with the moral framework where you notice progress?

What has improved is the increasing activeness of the inherent moral function 'programmed' within the average person worldwide.
As mentioned we can roughly measure his via the MQ which must be represented by changes in the neural wirings in the brain.

If you consider that the human nervous system has built in inhibitors of certain behaviors, it is absurd that later you suppose that humans have free will and have the ability to choose morally.

You misunderstood my point on the above.
What I stated is the moral inhibitors increased in strength and thus spontaneously inhibit evil actions.
There is no question of deliberately making choice before moral actions, like those of the Trolley Problems, i.e. killing one or 10.
I stated above moral actions are to be made spontaneously and ad hoc consideration are taken to drive improvements for future actions.

What is incomprehensible to me is that your position implies that whoever abides by his neurological restrictions is moral and whoever does not abide by them is immoral. Presenting as possible a scenario where the human will can choose to respect or not its neurological restrictions.

Calling moral those who respect their neurological restrictions and immoral those who do not respect them is only possible if one completely changes the meaning of "moral".

Again you misunderstood my point.

My point is those with stronger inhibitors [after taking steps to strengthen them] has higher moral competences [moral quotient] which can be roughly estimated.

You can feel for yourself [assuming it is true], that you don't go about killing humans is indication that your moral inhibitors re killing are reasonably strong at present.
However, your moral inhibitors re killing can be weakened via programming, e.g. brainwashing, drugs, stress, etc. thence you may kill some one or others.

Meaning of words are relative to consensus and popularity.

Yes, since morality is such a loose term, we need to have a precise meaning of what is morality-proper.
I have defined morality-in-general as 'that which is to do 'good' and avoid 'evil'.
Both 'good' and 'evil' must also be defined precisely.