Alexander_Reiswich wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 4:58 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:29 am
The principle is to identify the specific neural mechanisms and then made changes and improvement upon it to achieve the intended results, i.e. moral competence.
What I'm asking is a bit different; I'm aware that there are various means to develop "skills" such as empathy, emotional intelligence, impulse control, etc., so this is understood.
The problem is that the proposed methods can only be applied by a person who is somewhere in the middle of the Dunning-Krueger curve, so to speak. Meaning: you must have a sense of how much you don't know yet, and the willingness (as well as the
resources) to put effort into improving yourself.
Many -- arguably
most -- people are somewhere at the left hand side of the curve when it comes to these abilities. In other words, they're quite certain that they know themselves and understand how the world works, even though objectively, they're totally wrong.
The question is therefore how to spread this knowledge. It seems to me that upper middle-class people in developed countries are already doing a "decent" job at this, because a certain required base level of economic and cultural progress is met. When it comes to lower-than-middle-class (particularly not in first-world countries), it's very difficult to convince people to be "moral" in an environment where being moral is often synonymous with being naive and exploitable. Because of this it very much smells like a first-world problem.
Whilst the focus here is the self-development of the individual's Moral Quotient, it is implied all other relevant life skills are also being developed and improve upon.
As such if one is at the extreme of the Dunning-Krueger curve, then, the whole package of self-development will eliminate or reduced the Dunning-Krueger state.
The fact is immorality cut across all demographics, economics status, etc.
For example, psychopathy -one negative of morality - represent 1% of the human population and it is not specific to any human category.
Thus the self-development of moral competence is a general trait of the human population regardless of various human status.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:29 am
I have not develop my own moral FSK. What I have presented is the theory of how a credible FSK should be constructed.
So who should construct it, then? I don't think it will magically appear on its own. I have a basic idea of how you would envision it, but it feels very intangible and it's tough to imagine how it could actually be utilized to derive knowledge that is distinct from other fields and as such warrants its own FSK. Right now, we have dedicated fields such as neuro-science and evolutionary science which cover these topics, so a dedicated moral FSK seems confusing, more than anything else.
As I had stated the moral potential & function is innate within ALL humans but in different degrees of activeness.
As such this innate impulse has driven individuals to be 'moral' [left side of the curve] in the proto-days and eventually morality was organized into various moral FSK specific to the periods of human developments.
So, the moral FSK emerged naturally as it on its own as driven by the slow unfoldment of the moral potential and functions in relation to the degrees of human civilization development.
The moral FSK emerged initially as
pseudo-moral FSK such as tribal rules, religious edicts, political laws and others.
The moral elements so far embedded in pseudo-moral FSK are not effective.
What I am proposing is the moral FSK proper where there is no enforcement of morality from external authorities [tribal council, politics, social, etc.] but rather what is morality is self-regulated spontaneously within the individual himself.
To do so, we must first recognized the inherent objective moral facts, i.e. the physical mechanisms of the inherent innate moral potential and function within the brain.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:29 am
Nope, the moral FSK need not be communicated to the scientific community.
Well, but I assume it has to be accepted in the
moral FSK community (which doesn't really exist yet), at the very least, no?
In other words, some people from some communities have to adopt it and utilize it in their research. Who exactly would these people be and why should they accept the moral FSK? How would it benefit their research concretely, compared to simply relying on the scientific FSK?
The point is, as stated, there are already moral FSKs [of various qualities] within human history to the present but they are pseudo-moral FSK, not moral FSK proper.
For example the theistic-Christian-moral-FSK grounded on the teachings of Christ, is
intuitively right on target with the 'ought-not-ness-to-kill-humans' thus it is a pseudo-moral FSK. In a way they sort of 'guess' it correctly which aligns with the inherent features; it other words, the Christianity moral FSK [pseudo-] is based on faith rather than on verified and justified facts.
Christian are influenced to be moral [not killing humans], they will insist it is because God or Jesus command they must obey or else Hell will await them after death.
Say, if Christians in the future, state they will not kill humans because of their inherent moral functions as represented by physical facts, then, they are moving towards a moral-FSK proper re this particular moral element related to 'killing of humans'.
How the sense of morality-FSK proper to reach the masses is via education, evidence, testability and repeatability via self-development.
The moral sense and moral function are already inherent within all humans, so it is a matter of activating what is natural and not forcing anything new on individuals.
Note the analogy of the intelligence function within humanity and how it progress over the last 500 years to the present.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:29 am
An objective fact, truth or knowledge is conditioned upon a specific FSK, e.g. the scientific FSK.
An objective fact, truth or knowledge is thus derived from a moral FSK.
To be credible the moral FSK major inputs must be from the scientific FSK, which must be represented by justifiable physical referents in terms of neuronal sets, etc.
The objective moral fact, e.g. ought-not-ness-to-kill-human algorithm or neuronal set is a physical thing in the brain that inhibit the killing impulse.
Falsifiability: If this neural set is damaged, e.g. as in a malignant psychopath, then he will have the potential to kill humans.
What I'm asking is how to determine what
is a moral fact. In your example, you say that there are certain aspects to our brains that inhibit the impulse to kill, and you
state that this is a moral fact -- as if this was already established. But you don't provide your reasoning as to how you arrive at the conclusion that it
is a moral fact (which, I assume, would have to be concluded on the basis of the moral FSK).
So what constitutes a moral fact, exactly? Is it a moral fact simply because you have defined moral facts as that which pertains to regulating impulses to kill? Is this an exhaustive definition?
Would impulses pertaining to lying and deception be considered moral facts? Or those pertaining to stealing?
How about more subtle ones, such as the ability to delay gratification? Or the ability to estimate character and intentions?
My point is that our brains encompass a multitude of features, so the question is how do we differentiate between moral and non-moral ones? Where do we draw the line?
As stated, in establishing the Moral FSK [proper], we must define what is morality and what elements it cover.
A moral FSK proper must exclude
virtues [honesty, charitable, prudence, grateful, integrity] which will be dealt separately within its Virtue-FSK.
For each of the moral elements, we must assign weightage of the degree of evilness.
Surely if we rank genocide at say 99/100 degree of evilness, we can easily rank say petty lying at 10/100 degree of evilness/badness and estimate what are the features in between the extremes.
Reasoning of moral facts?
We identify 'killing of humans' as a moral element.
It is evident out of the 8 billion of people, the majority of human do not have an active impulse to kill humans despite having the biological fact of a potential to kill.
It is a known fact [general accepted] that 1% of people have psychopath tendencies and a small percentage of them are malignant with an active impulse to kill humans.
It is undeniable the above features exist in the brains of the related humans as a
fact which science at present has minimal knowledge of.
Since they are related to the moral FSK, there are objective moral facts awaiting discovery of their precise nature and mechanisms.
It is a matter to time that the detailed moral mechanisms will be uncovered by more advanced neurosciences.
This is how I infer the existence of objective moral facts; this is supported by various partial empirical research and findings.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 6:29 am
Falsifiability: If this neural set is damaged, e.g. as in a malignant psychopath, then he will have the potential to kill humans.
That's not
falsifiability, that's just an impaired neural mechanism.
I'm referring to falsifiability in the scientific sense:
"falsifiability is the capacity for some proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
Any statement of an objective nature must be falsifiable, including even taxonomic ones. For example, a watermelon was / is thought of as a fruit, but is actually a berry. Meaning: the definition of a fruit, based on our knowledge about watermelons, falsifies they idea that a watermelon is a fruit.
So the question is: how can (for example) the statement "brain features that inhibit the impulse to kill are a
moral fact" be falsified?
Just to clarify: I'm not asking whether brain features that inhibit the impulse to kill are a
neurological fact -- this is obvious. But you posit that it's a
moral fact, so we need an entirely different approach to falsify it, which isn't obvious to me.
As stated above,
1. it is evident the majority of people do not go about killing humans while some people did kill humans throughout the history of mankind.
2. Thus there must be some physical facts in the brain of these humans that drive the killing of human and corresponding elements where people do not kill humans.
3. Since the above physical facts related to morality within a moral FSK, they are objective moral facts.
The above so evident, not sure how could I construct a falsifiable position.
Perhaps there is no need for a falsification in the above case.
I believe the eventual empirical verification and justification of the above fact via the scientific FSK then process via the moral FSK is sufficient as objective knowledge and truth.