Alexander_Reiswich wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 2:56 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 2:19 am
The will-to-survive is the Normative which will ground all other sub-Normatives.
It is the actual ground for ALL moral issues i.e. classical and modern.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 2:19 am
You forgot?
I defined morality within a moral FSK as 'avoiding evil to promote good' which is grounded on the objective will-to-survive.
Atrocities which contra the 'universal' will-to-survive are evil and immoral, thus cannot be moral.
Why are atrocities immoral? It is because they are evil which contra the objective universal will-to-survive.
This is a reason why Morality must be reducible to an objective ground or reason, i.e. the will-to-survive that is shared by ALL human beings.
The way you describe your position here is just as I understand it -- and it reinforces my observation that it can't be applied to real moral questions. But maybe I just fail to see the potential. Based on my understanding, you're arguing that people should value the entirety of humanity, possibly even all other life forms, ultimately "equally" on the basis of their will-to-survive. The problem, however, is that our individual interests are often not in alignment. The idea of altering or "optimizing" human nature such that each individual human can make the best possible moral choice at any given moment is nice and all. But it's so difficult that it's not even clear how to best approach this challenge. It's certainly not going to be achieved in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, the question is how we should deal with the bazillion real, current moral problems that we're currently facing.
As I had stated, first we must defined 'what is morality' [avoid evil] and what morality must cover [the evil elements] which I stated must be exhaustive.
We need to focus on the basic elements of evil and NOT on the extensive variations that branches from it.
Take nutrition, within the 'bazillion' types of food, there are only 3 basic macro nutrients, i.e. carbohydrates, proteins and fats plus essential minerals and vitamins which we can focus on to deal with for effective nutrition.
Here's an example: say a male refugee rapes a woman in the country that has welcomed him (say, a European country). How should we handle this violation in a morally correct way? If we deport him to his home country, there's a high likelihood he will be killed. If we imprison him, he'll receive free accommodation at the tax payers expense. Obviously, the death penalty is not considered a viable or humane solution, either.
I realize that the best solution according to your theory would be to prevent the crime from happening in the first place -- but clearly this is beyond our means at the moment. So the question is how we should deal with it right here and now, provided we, as a society, are interested and willing to work out the most objective response.
What I want to know is how exactly we should approach this problem, such that we don't have to rely on our personal preconceptions of fairness and justice. The idea is to refer to a methodology that is truly objective, such that multiple people can apply it independently from one another and still consistently arrive at the same (or equivalent) conclusions (everything else being equal). The questions we want to answer are these:
- what should we demand from the perpetrator?
- what should be our duties relative to the victim?
- what should be our duties relative to our society as a whole?
It should go without saying that I'm not asking for studies and research regarding these questions. The theory itself must be able to inform us about what we ought to do, at least in some general sense. I'm also not asking about what appears "reasonable", because this is the current status-quo. A moral theory must be able to answer these questions in a precise and predictable manner. If it can't, then it's simply not a moral theory.
Yes, for me, the best solution - the moral solution - is to prevent the crime from happening in the first place which is a possibility.
Given our current psychological states, there is no effective solution to prevent rapes.
You need to take into account of 'rape' within the history of mankind.
In the early stages of human kind [say 100,000 years ago], women [maybe man] were simply rape by those who are more powerful than them.
As human kind evolved in time, the situation of 'rape' [evil and sufferings] gradually reduced on a human-wide basis where;
-tribes introduced their own laws on rapes,
-religions threaten rapes as a sin with hellfire, etc.
-governments introduced laws to punish rapists.
-increase in the level of empathy within humanity in time.
-NGOs are highlighting the sufferings of women who are raped
-etc.
So we have improved in prevention of rapes tremendously since 100,000 years ago with the current ongoing trend of improvements via the tribal, social, religious, political means.
What is critical is, what is driving the very slow improvements in the prevention of rapes throughout that 100,000 years of history is
the underlying inherent moral potential is being activated, in this case very slowly.
AR:
What I want to know is how exactly we should approach this problem, such that we don't have to rely on our personal preconceptions of fairness and justice.
This would be a task for politics and various social organizations and not for morality - cannot be dealt within a moral theory
at present because we do not have the moral competence to do so effectively.
In this case the politicians, law makers and other relevant authorities has to be more effective to improve the current situations taking into account their respective conditions and limitation in each country which would be very subjective and thus cannot be universal.
Up the present we have to rely on religions, politics and the likes to deal with evil elements because the inherent moral potential within the majority of people are not active.
However while these non-moral interventions are holding the fort against evil, the moral potential is being activated slowly. This is evident by the improvements in the prevent of rapes and its related suffering from 100,000 years to the present.
As mentioned above, what is driving the improvements in the prevention of rapes throughout that 100,000 years of history is the moral potential being activated, in this case very slowly which is a problem.
Thus the critical task is how can be expedite the slowness in the unfoldment of the inherent moral potential?
This is why we need a Moral FSK and not the Political FSK to bring greater effective solutions in the prevention of rapes [& all other evil acts] and its related sufferings.
What you are asking for above [making moral judgments] is '
fire-fighting' the symptoms, what we need is a moral model [FSK] to tackle the deeper root causes.
In this case of relying on the Moral FSK [model], we have to understand the moral mechanisms and the moral facts in the brain and mind so as to improve its efficiency to the extent that all humans or the majority will increase the average moral quotient [MQ] from say 100 [2023] to 1500 [2075 or >] such that the individuals will not have the uncontrollable lust to rape another.
To achieve a MQ of 1500 in 2075 or >, humanity must start now from 2023 to recognize the moral potential, moral functions, moral mechanism moral facts within the human brain and mind, then strive to continually improve on the MQ in 75 or more years in the future.
One of the current limitations is we have moral facts deniers like Peter Holmes and gang who are resisting modern scientific knowledge related to morality thus hindering moral progress.
Note Harris' lament on this;
Many people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from speaking in terms of “Moral truth” and, therefore, from making cross-cultural Moral judgments—or Moral judgments at all.
Having discussed this subject in a variety of public forums, I have heard from literally thousands of highly educated men and women
that morality is a myth,
that statements about human values are without truth conditions (and are, therefore, nonsensical), and
that concepts like well-being and misery are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them.1
Many of these people also claim that a scientific foundation for morality would serve no purpose in any case.
Chapter 2 The Moral Landscape