moral relativism

[iambiguous]

Russell’s Moral Quandary
David Berman holds key oppositions in tension, including concerning morality.

Ways of Being Moral

There are two opposing basic moral theories, one purely non-natural and absolute, the other purely natural and relativistic. The former I think is most powerfully exemplified by Plato, according to whom moral values exist in the abstract realm of Forms, where the Form of the Good overlaps with other Forms, such as Justice.

All I can do here is, once again, ask those who subscribe to Plato's "realm of Forms" as it pertains to human morality, to bring those Forms down to Earth. And, in regard to a moral conflagration of note, to note their applicability given particular social, political and economic interactions. Let them pluck a headline from the news. They can note what they deem is relevant given Plato's Forms.

Or note passages from The Republic and examine his conclusions in such a way they can be defended as more than just moral and political prejudices rooted existentially in turn in his own historical and cultural contexts.

Justice and abortion. Justice and gun control. Justice and homosexuality. Justice and the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.

Absolute moral valuations can then be made by those who are aware of these Forms. According to the opposite, naturalist position, exemplified most powerfully by Spinoza, the way to understand moral perfection is through the identification of the human mind at its best with the whole of Nature. Put in Spinoza’s terminology, human perfection, including moral perfection, can be attained if the eternal mode of the human mind is brought into accord with the Mind of ‘God or Nature’.

On the other hand, if it is the case that human minds are [and can only ever be] wholly in accord with nature's own laws of matter, than how are Plato and Spinoza not just two more dominoes toppling over on cue from the cradle to the grave. Just like all the rest of us?

All moral values, some determinists argue, are entirely interchangeable in a world that unfolds in the only possible manner.

[promethean75]

"Let them pluck a headline from the news. They can note what they deem is relevant given Plato's Forms."

Philosophy has always been (largely) an activity afforded by a certain luxury. Being in a position in which u are not immediately pressed by corporeal problems which would reveal how useless such activity would be if u were ever pressed as such. By not being pressed, one isn't able to experience its uselessness.

If u were about to be eaten by a bear, starve to death on the city streets or divorce your wife, Locke's primary qualities and Moore's Here Is A Hand would be the last thing on your mind.

I speak of epistemology, ontology and metaphysics more so than ethics and politics, which do present corporeal problems and about which philosophy is unavoidable.

[iambiguous]

Russell’s Moral Quandary
David Berman holds key oppositions in tension, including concerning morality.

My suggested solution to Russell’s moral quandary is that both positions are true, and so provide a way of attaining what is Good (as Plato calls it), or perfect (as Spinoza puts it).

No, seriously, how's that working out for anyone here? What Good of late have you attained in your interactions with others? And pertaining to conflicting goods how would you differentiate the Platonic Good from that which Spinoza might deem to be perfect?

Yet as I mentioned, it is necessary that each person accept one or the other of the theories in order to pursue what is good or perfect. This choice should be in accordance with his or her basic philosophical type. In short, one must become either a total naturalist or non-naturalist; and not just in theory but in life.

Over and over again: What on Earth does this mean "for all practical purposes" in regard to the actual behaviors that one chooses? And how is one's "philosophical type" not rooted existentially in dasein? Which "one or the other of the theories" above do you embrace "in order to pursue what is good or perfect" in your life?

Cite specific examples please.

To be sure, this is neither easy to understand nor to achieve, for in this world there is very little chance of being completely good or perfect, since this world is a mixture of opposing elements.

Then back to the part where those on these paths...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...have their very own existential narratives regarding Good and Perfect.

And when they clash...? Then what?

In other words, less Russell's quandary and more my own "fractured and fragmented" predicament.

Instead [as usual] back up into the general description philosophical clouds...

However both Plato and Spinoza recognize that our lives in this world can be better or worse, and they both recommend practical ways to make them better – for example, by us accepting short-term compromise and cooperation with people who oppose us. This provides the means whereby each person can move by degrees from one imperfect stage to another which is a little more perfect and contented – either in the Platonic, non-natural way, or the Spinozistic, natural way. Specifically, an individual must try to realize and then actualize what is essential in his or her nature, by eliminating more and more the opposing alien elements in his or her self and life. In this way, he or she can ultimately become either a demi-god, according to Plato; or one with the mind of ‘God or Nature’, according to Spinoza.

Got that?

You do? Okay, are you closer to being a Platonic "non-naturalist" or Spinozian "naturalist" in regard to a moral conflagration of note?

Or does that actually have little or nothing to do with being a "serious philosopher" here in your view?

[iambiguous]

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever
Maarten Boudry at APA blog

The philosopher Allan Bloom once lamented: ‘There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.’ Perhaps Bloom overstated his case, but as a university teacher myself, I think he’s onto something.

How ridiculous is that?

In other words, if it is ridiculous.

You're a student today. And, what, chances are you believe that truth is relative? Okay, which truth might that be? That the laws of nature and mathematics and logic and the material world around are not applicable to all? It all depends instead on what you believe about them? That gravity and electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces are just a matter of one's personal opinion?

Or, instead, should we zero in on, say, Bloom's moral and political convictions? His truth ought be your truth regarding, say, the closing of the American mind? That, as Martha Nussbaum once noted, "for Bloom, Nietzsche had been disastrously influential in modern American thought."

Is that true for all of us?

Do people who proclaim that ‘truth is relative’ or that ‘everyone has their own truth’ really believe this? Even Bloom adds the caveat: ‘…or says he believes’.

Over and again here I come back to this: It's not what you believe about the American mind or Nietzsche or moral and political convictions, it's what you are actually able to demonstrate is in fact true about them for all those who wish to think of themselves as rational human beings.

Then the part that revolves around the limitations of language itself:

As anyone with two neurons to rub together can see, the thesis is self-defeating. If it’s ‘true’ that truth is relative, then the assertion itself is also relative and cancels itself out. Relativism about what is morally right and wrong less obviously defeats itself, since it is not entirely clear if the claim that “moral standards are relative” is itself a moral claim.

One thing, however, seems abundantly clear to me...that relativism pertaining to morality appears to be profoundly more problematic. How else to explain the utter failure of ethicists to concoct a moral philosophy that comes anywhere near to approaching the objective truths that science is able to provide us with.

On the other hand...?

But in practice, moral relativism is an equally self-defeating position. For instance, moral relativists will typically condemn the belief in universal moral standards as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’, the implicit assumption being that cultural imperialism is bad. But if moral standards are relative, then so is the claim that cultural imperialism is reprehensible.

Yes, up in the intellectual clouds, this makes sense. But down here on the ground, one way or another, "rules of behavior" have to be propounded, then legislated and then enforced in any human community. Then "for all practical purposes" everything comes to revolve around one or another intertwining of "might make right", "right makes might" and "democracy and the rule of law".

And, come on, get real, "cultural imperialism" has existed for centuries now. Alongside ethnocentrism and nationalism and global capitalism and totalitarianism and theocracy. What difference does it make to those living under them if philosophers can impugn it?

In any rational discussion, relativism is the intellectual equivalent of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, the deterrent used by nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Pressing the red button will destroy your enemy, but ensure your own destruction as well.

Again, this depends entirely on how relativism is understood by particular people in particular contexts.

Let's examine one that is of particular interest to you.

[iambiguous]

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever
Maarten Boudry at APA blog

Perhaps a relativist may simply shrug at such logical niceties [above] and happily continue to advocate for relativism, like the Dude in The Big Lebowski: ‘Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man’.

Only the fact is that, in regard to the overwhelming preponderance of things that we encounter in our day to day interactions with others, they are not at all just a matter of opinion. Instead, here, what does become a matter of opinion is our reaction to the Dude himself. Some will admire him, others will detest him. So, philosophically, is there a way to resolve this? Is he or is he not "the hero" here?

However, even the staunchest relativist doesn’t really swallow his own medicine. Try gratuitously accusing such a person of being a child molester, and they will indignantly protest their innocence. Not as a matter of subjective opinion, as one perspective among other equally valid ones, but as a hard and objective truth.

Please.

Yes, most accused of molesting children will protest vehemently that they are innocent. Why? Because accused child molesters are often sent to prison for a long, long time. And then in prison they become a Chester or a Chomo. But is it therefore an objective truth that child molestation is inherently, necessarily an immoral behavior. In a No God world.

It is? Okay let's hear the argument. Philosophical or otherwise. One that, say, will even convince the sociopaths?

Postmodernists may proclaim that ‘truth’ is a product of power structures and that modern science is just a ‘narrative’ of white European males, but those radical views are thrown out the window when they go to get cancer treatment, or when they board a plane to travel to postmodernist conferences.

Just out of curiosity, name a few postmodernists who claim that modern science is just a "narrative of White European males". Name a few of them who would refuse treatment for cancer or refuse to board a plane because reality here is just a matter on someone's personal opinion.

[iambiguous]

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever
Maarten Boudry at APA blog

It’s the same with moral relativism. People may pretend that judging other cultures is a form of imperialism, and some are disturbingly mealy-mouthed about horrible practices such as genital mutilation or child marriage. But if we were to discover a tribe that, say, willfully tortures innocent children – or any other sufficiently extreme example – they would be equally outraged, and would balk at the notion that the immorality of such practices only exists in the eye of the beholder.[/

mealy-mouthed: avoiding the use of direct and plain language, as from timidity, excessive delicacy, or hypocrisy; inclined to mince words; insincere, devious, or compromising.

On the other hand, when it comes to things like genital mutilation and child marriage not many in the West will not use very direct and plain language: IT'S EVIL!

Me? I'm back to this...

[These things] comes closest to upending my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind. People tap me on the shoulder and ask "can you seriously believe that the Holocaust or abusing children or cold-blooded murder is not inherently, necessarily immoral?"

And, sure, the part of me that would never, could never imagine my own participation in things of this sort has a hard time accepting that, yes, in a No God world they are still behaviors able to be rationalized by others as either moral or, for the sociopaths, justified given their belief that everything revolves around their own "me, myself and I" self-gratification.

And what is the No God philosophical -- scientific? -- argument that establishes certain behaviors as in fact objectively right or objectively wrong? Isn't it true that philosophers down through the ages who did embrace one or another rendition of deontology always included one or another rendition of the transcending font -- God -- to back it all up?

It’s reassuring to know that relativists are not as foolish as they sound. But that doesn’t mean relativism is harmless.

Not as foolish as they sound about what? And harmless from whose point of view? In fact, what seems particularly foolish to me, are those moral objectivists among us who insist that the only way not to sound foolish, the only way to eradicate harm in this world is to embrace their dogmas. Indeed, when it comes to harm, some will go so far as this: my way or the highway...my way or else.

Even just pretending that there are no universal standards of right and wrong has pernicious effects. The real purpose of going relativist is always self-serving and opportunistic: to evade criticism and accountability.

For some, sure.

But if there are others who do believe there are universal standards of right and wrong pertaining to a moral conflagration of note, let's go there. After all, I would argue that it is the moral objectivists who are more likely to be "self-serving and opportunistic"... more likely to "evade criticism and accountability" by simply assuming that their path and only their path is the true one.

The philosopher David Stove called it the Ishmael Effect, named after the narrator from Moby Dick. At the end of Melville’s novel, the ship sinks and everyone drowns, except for the narrator of the book: ‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee’. Like Ishmael, the relativist exempts himself from the fate to which he condemns everyone else.

Some relativists, perhaps. But I am certainly not excluding myself here. Am I any less "human all too human" than anyone else here?

[iambiguous]

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever
Maarten Boudry at APA blog

The trouble is that, even though self-serving and self-defeating, there is something about relativism that sounds good.

You know what's coming...

Relativism not only sounds good but for some it actually is the best of all possible worlds. At least on this side of the grave. Unlike the moral objectivists, the relativists have so many more options. This ranges from those who embrace democracy and the rule of law to those who become amoral "show me the money" capitalists to those who become out and out sociopaths.

And, in fact, it's always been different strokes for different folks here. It then just comes down to whether the strokes revolve more around dasein or philosophy.

Thus...

In everyday life we are all familiar with situations in which different people have different perspectives on an issue, and there’s no objective fact of the matter about who’s right.

"Rival goods". Only those all up and down the moral and political and theological spectrum insist that, on the contrary, not only are there moral commandments and/or moral obligations but, for some, to deny this is to put your very soul on the line.

Moreover, criticizing someone can feel as if you’re imposing your beliefs on others, thus infringing on their freedom.

Again, however, for any number of FFOs, the whole point of being here is to mock those who do refuse to accept their own One True Path. Then the Stooges who insist that I'm here to accomplish the same thing. Completely ignoring the argument I make regarding my win/win frame of mind.

Conversely, moral relativism, if you don’t think about it too hard, appears commendably tolerant, humble and self-effacing.

In other words, if you think about moral relativism exactly as he does you will encompass it exactly as it is. Theoretically, anyway.

And indeed, it’s true that we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn seemingly abhorrent cultural practices if we only have a superficial understanding of their rationale and history. Being overly judgemental can be annoying, as we know from Jesus’s parable about the woman who’s about to get stoned by a mob. If you argue that someone is objectively in the wrong, you sound like one of those sinners who are eager to cast the first stone.

Stoned by the mob...for what reason? What behavior did she choose that precipitated the stoning? What historical era and cultural context did this all unfold in? Was there a religious or an ideological or a philosophical "school of thought" involved?

As for a "superficial understanding" of another culture, where's the part where the serious philosophers among us provide us with a set of deontological assumptions that do not fall back on God?

[iambiguous]

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever
Maarten Boudry at APA blog

But despite claims to the contrary, sometimes people are objectively wrong, and it’s pernicious to pretend otherwise.

Wrong about what though? And the crucial distinction here remains the same. You claim to believe that this or that is true. Okay, but then the part where you are actually able to demonstrate why all rational men and women are obligated to share in your belief.

There are facts that can be determined regarding this or that moral conflgration. Facts collected from many different sides. But which side is in fact able to substantiate that all others who do wish to be thought of as reasonable and virtuous human beings are obligated to think the same?

In other words, for any number of the moral objectivists, it’s pernicious not to think as they do.

In his splendid new book Mental Immunity, the philosopher Andy Norman writes that bad ideas can be regarded as mind parasites, and proposes strategies to inoculate our minds against them. Just like biological parasites can invade our bodies and make us sick, mind parasites can infect our minds and make us stupid.

Okay -- sigh -- what particular bad ideas? In regard to the issues that have rent the speies now for thousands of years, please note what you are convinced reflect examples of "mind parasites".

Just more of the same, in my view. Another general derscription intellectual contraption that never even makes an attempt to follow through for all practical purposes given an issue and a context most here would be familiar with.

Then just more of the same mental masturbation...

From that immunological perspective, relativism is a major disruptor of our mental immune system. Objective standards of right and wrong are our main defences against bad ideas. If we lose those standards, then anything goes.

Just another rendition of "in the absence of God, all things are permitted". Only those like me tend to take it in the opposite direction...depicting a world in which the FFOs among us insist that only their own standards "go". And, for any number of them here, even then only up in the theoretical clouds.

To wit...

By disabling our natural immunity, relativism makes us vulnerable to a whole host of bad ideas (because who’s to say that an idea is really bad?) and prevents us from picking up good ones (because why learn anything new if it’s all relative anyway?). It is also corrosive to our social norms, because it undermines the very notion that we are accountable for our beliefs and behaviours, and that we need to be able to justify them if challenged.

Serious philosophy in a nutshell? Good ideas....bad ideas.

In that sense, relativism is not just some bad idea, but the mother lode of bad ideas. It’s about time we stamp it out. ][/quote

And any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...wholeheartedly agree.

It's just that some are more likely to tack on "or else" than others.

[iambiguous]

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics
Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved.

Philip Pettit is perhaps the most important Irish moral and political philosopher alive today.

First of all, from my frame of mind, when it comes to human interactions at the intersection of identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy, how exactly is Irish philosophy distinct from the philosophy of any other country?

Pettit has written numerous books on a variety of topics. He has, for example, for some time been an ardent advocate of republicanism. Long viewed as an alternative to liberalism, this political ideology (no relation to any political party) places non-domination at its core. According to republicans, a free society protects all its citizens, even (or especially) the most vulnerable, from subjection to the arbitrary whims of others.

Another "general description intellectual contraption". Another philosophical assessment that is scarcely taken down out of the scholastic clouds and examined existentially given the many, many moral and political conflagrations that beset us.

As for the birth of ethics, how could that possibly be more readily understood? Whether in regard to the things that we need or the things that we want, all human communities must choose to either reward or to punish particular behaviors. Why? Because there are conflicting ways to sustain particular means of production -- capitalism? socialism? -- and the things that we want more than we need have always precipitated antagonism, discord and dissension.

But that is especially the case in the "modern world" where we are confronted time and again with any number of alternative and ofttimes conflicting paths. Most of us no longer live in villages or hamlets where there is invariably a place for everyone and everyone was expected to make the sojourn from the cradle to the grave by acting accordingly.

Thus, before the birth of philosophy, that generally revolved around "the gods" or centuries old traditions and customs and conventions. Philosophers themselves came to be only because the means of production had advanced to the point that "surplus labor" became a reality. Then accompanying the growth of science and the advent of capitalism, things shifted from an "other worldly" frame of mind [Gods and religion] to a "this worldly" perspective, focusing in on human interactions that increasingly demanded a more focused attention on "institutionalized" interactions where morality segued into any number of constitutions and laws.

[iambiguous]

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics
Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved.

The Genesis of Morality

Pettit imagines a fictional land called Erewhon, an anagram of ‘Nowhere’ (the name was originally the title of a nineteenth-century novel by Samuel Butler). Erewhon is populated by creatures very much like us, but lacking ethical concepts. Pettit then imagines “how a community of individuals who do not initially employ ethical concepts might evolve communal practices to a point where such concepts would become available to them”

Shades of Flatland? A community of individuals inhabiting an entirely two-dimensional world? Inherent communications breakdowns given our reality and their reality? And then the part where, again, any community of human beings is surely obligated to come up with one or another historical and cultural rendition of behaviors that are either prescribed or proscribed.

And ethical concepts are one thing, actual rewards and punishments another thing altogether.

In Pettit’s counterfactual genealogy of morals, the first steps towards the development of ethics take place when people desire to make commitments to one another.

Here, of course, I'm back to these folks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

Don't most of them make commitments to each other? And don't many of them insist that all rational and ethical men and women are obligated to make the same commitments? "Or else!" bellow the FFOs among us.

The people of Erewhon can make statements to each other: about the weather, about where to find food, even about their own thoughts, desires, and plans. But sometimes people are mistaken, even about their own desires and needs, and sometimes people change their minds, especially about their plans. Pettit calls these the ‘misleading-mind’ and the ‘change-mind’ excuses.

Here though aren't we back to that crucial distinction between noting what we deem to be the mistakes of others -- personal opinions -- and the existence of philosopher-kings able to encompass what all rational men and women are, in fact, obligated to think and feel and believe? The secular equivalent of God and religion: one of us vs. one of them.

But the availability of these excuses makes it difficult for people to rely on what others say. Suppose for example you want to go hunting tomorrow, and hunting goes better when more than one person is involved. You ask a friend to join you, and he agrees. But he fails to show up. Your friend could offer a misleading-mind excuse – something like, “I realized my desire to hunt wasn’t really very strong at all” – or a changed-mind excuse – something like, “I did plan to go hunting, but I decided I’d rather do something else.”

Or suppose you came upon someone who insisted that hunting was immoral...that no rational man or woman would kill another animal. Except perhaps in self-defense or when subsistence itself is on the line.

Hunting is just one more set of behaviors in any given community where over time particular sets of rewards and punishments came to prevail. Again, customs, conventions, traditions etc., that were passed down over the decades...or even over the centuries. Ever and always evolving and changing historically and culturally.

It's one thing to renege on commitments because you changed your mind...and another thing altogether to change your mind because philosophers and ethicists have finally been able to encompass a deontological framework for things like hunting.

[iambiguous]

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics
Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved.

The development of commitments would naturally lead the people of Erewhon to what Pettit regards as the two central moral concepts, desirability and responsibility. “While ethical concepts vary,” Pettit writes, “they all serve to mark different grounds on which actions count as morally desirable, on the one side, and agents count as fit to be held morally responsible, on the other”

The main point however [mine] is not that to many different individuals what they desire and what they believe one should be held responsible for can vary considerably, but that to date philosophers have been woefully unsuccessful in subsuming these conflicts in anything approaching a deontological political agenda. Thus the continuing need for one or another God or one or another ideology or one or another One True Path to enlightenment. Each to his or her own dogma, perhaps, but that doesn't make the points I raise go away.

How might this development happen? The practice of avowal leads naturally to the practice of co-avowal, whereby groups of people avow certain desires together. And the practice of co-avowal leads naturally to the idea of desires fit for common, indeed, universal, co-avowal.

Okay, but how does this not unfold given the historical and cultural parameters of any given community in a world ever and always evolving socially, politically and economically? Contingency, chance and change are the three main components of any human interactions. That and the profoundly problematic permutations embedded "organically" in the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

As a result, “we are more or less bound to evolve a concept of the desirable” from a universal standpoint, one that anyone could freely adopt, and “this concept is effectively equivalent to the concept of the morally desirable”.

But concepts so evolved generally ossify into one or another objectivist mentality. Not only do those who are "one of us" devise a theoretical assessment of good and evil up in the theological, philosophical and/or ideological clouds, but some are then intent re the "psychology of objectivism" to go beyond championing their own One True Path and as well go after those who refuse accept their own convictions.

[iambiguous]

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics
Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved.

Moreover, “we who have evolved the concept of the morally or multilaterally desirable would go on to hold one another responsible to certain judgments and standards of morally desirability”. In other words, Pettit regards it as natural to expect the people of Erewhon to hold morally responsible those who “offend against a shared, routine standard of desirability”, given a lack of acceptable excuses.

How is the above not but another classic example of a "general description intellectual contraption" pertaining to ethics? Even concepts of morality themselves evolve over time in any given human community...given ever evolving and changing historical and cultural contexts.

Erewhon, however, being a hypothetical community, becomes whatever it is conjured up to be by its inventor. So, how close to or far away from your own flesh and blood community is it?

Then just more of the same...

The act of holding responsible, as Pettit sees it, has three components: the recognition effect, the exhortation effect, and the reprimand effect. In holding someone responsible for moral failure, we recognize them as being capable of doing better; we exhort them to do better in the future; and we sanction them for not doing better, even if this is only through our negative judgment of them.

Again, run this by any number of men and women here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...and ask them to expound upon the act of holding others responsible. Start with their own assumptions regarding what constitutes moral failure.

[popeye1945]

Morality is a subjective feeling, subjective thought. As biological beings we are the creators of meaning, one might think that being of a like biological kind there would be a unity of morality. This would be so were it not for the reality that context defines, and the societies and their histories are defined by their greater reality, the environmental context. So the origin of moral relativism is the defining contexts that mold the sentiments of our biological natures. To context, we adapt or perish.

[iambiguous]

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics
Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved

Pettit claims – avows, in fact – that language is “essential for morality”. The story of Erewhon relies on the fact that “the practices that make ethics inescapable for the protagonists in that narrative – and the practices, presumptively, that make it part also of our destiny – involve special uses of natural language”. How, after all, could anyone avow, pledge, recognize, or exhort anything without language?

More to point [mine], to what extent, out in a world of flesh and blood human interactions that, as we all know, can and often do come to blows in the world of actual conflicting goods, are the words we use connected to the world we live in. To what extent can we demonstrate that what we believe about our own spiritual and moral and political value judgments all other rational men and women are obligated to believe as well?

Natural language? Natural morality? We should all practice what those like Satyr and his ilk here insist is "nature's way"?

But while it is clear that much of our moral behaviour requires words, it is much less clear that morality itself does, nor is it at all clear that morality only came into being once our ancestors acquired language.

Clearly, to the extent any particular community practices a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, might makes right approach to rewards and punishments, language becomes less and less important. With grunts and sneers and clubs, much can be communicated.

After all, our primate relatives do many things that certainly appear moral in nature. According to recent experimental evidence, for example, capuchin monkeys get quite indignant if other monkeys receive better rewards (more fruit) for the same effort (see for instance ‘Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay’, Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de Waal, Nature 425, 2003). These monkeys certainly seem to recognize unfairness and to respond accordingly.

On the other hand, capuchin monkeys are still compelled far, far, far more by genes than memes. And it's not like they thought it all through at philosophy forums first. After all, how much have capuchin monkey communities changed historically and culturally over the centuries? Are they convinced that fairness is an inherent component of a deontological moral order?

Then back to this:

Tomasello makes a similar point in his response to Pettit included in The Birth of Ethics. According to Tomasello, the origins of morality lie in cooperation, and cooperation may or may not require linguistic communication. A ‘simple head nod’ or the like will often suffice.

Nod if you agree.

[Iwannaplato]

After all, our primate relatives do many things that certainly appear moral in nature. According to recent experimental evidence, for example, capuchin monkeys get quite indignant if other monkeys receive better rewards (more fruit) for the same effort (see for instance ‘Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay’, Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de Waal, Nature 425, 2003). These monkeys certainly seem to recognize unfairness and to respond accordingly.

On the other hand, capuchin monkeys are still compelled far, far, far more by genes than memes. And it's not like they thought it all through at philosophy forums first. After all, how much have capuchin monkey communities changed historically and culturally over the centuries? Are they convinced that fairness is an inherent component of a deontological moral order?

If one is Darwinian, then this model seems pretty fair. We are social mammals. Our strategies have to do with practices that aid the group and individuals. These become via evolution connected to feelings of fairness, wrongness and rightness. Once we get to language + a greater sense of long term effects and varieties of causation, all sorts of things monkeys might not consider can come into the moral realm, building on those feelings.
You could say that social mammal behavior is a bit like an experiment (without an experimenter). Those proto-moral practices that lead to group survival will last longer than those that don't. This can lead to objectively better sets of behavior. If the alpha male monkey in all groups kills every single monkey baby in the group, well, that group is not going to survive. So, natural selection is going to eliminate that kind of proto-morality. It just won't work. Sharing food has worked well for many social mammals. Defending as a group against predators, that kind of teamwork, that has also been effective for long periods of time. One could argue that certain moralities are more effective that others. One can certainly rule out some moralities as objectively terrible for species survival. This doesn't mean they are objectively Good, in some Platonic or Christian sense. But it's not like all moralities are the same, in the moral relativism sense. If we have as a base the urge to continue the species, well, some strategies and tactics can be ruled out right off the bat. Filicide and generalized infanticide don't work, period.

So, one can try to construct a morality out of what leads to general group survival, long term and even potentially what leads to thriving. The problem comes in because humans are so damn complicated.

But moral relativism has its limits when looking at monkeys. Some things work better than others. And some behavioral patterns are much more likely to stick, given the emotions, urges and tendencies that monkeys got.

But a defacto Thou shalt not kill all the babies, is pretty hard to argue with. You can categorize is however you want, but in the end that's a philosopher's game. The monkeys as a group with throw fruit at you, attack you physically, scream at you, even fight to the death if you try to break that commandment, be you monkey or human or tiger.

Does it really matter and to whom how we categorize that commandment? Call it heuristic, de facto behavioral pattern, social group limit, whatever. Does it matter what we call it?

If it does, to whom does it matter? And isn't that person making an objectivist claim? No, we shouldn't call it an objective moral.Well, if we all want at least some of the monkey babies to survive and that label works better than calling it a gene heuristic, why not keep the name? Of course, most monkeys and humans don't go around calling things objective morals, even objectivists, only philosophy forum participants. Talk about serious philosophy. The moment the discussion comes up everyone drawn to partcipate is a serious philosopher with an ax (banana?) to grind.