A List Of Rules For Moral Realism.

Recent surveys show that most scientists today are moral realists. Or IOW, non-naturalists. Right? I know the naturalistic fallacy just says that ethics can't be proven, or found in any other science. (For example, on another message board, someone said. All science basically can be reduced down the science of mathematics. Which itself comes down to simple arithmetic.) That sounds like it is endorsing ethical nihilism. Which itself wouldn't make sense. What would be the point of a human being saying life is pointless, or that nothing is good or bad? But it just means ethics something alone and unto itself. There are things that are always right, and always wrong. But you can't prove it, using medicine or math for example.

I was wondering though, what ethical system most scientists, and philosophers for that matter, subscribe to. There is more than one. As my ethics teacher in community college told us in 1996, even charter of rights are held up as universal standards. He was referring to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, BTW. But is there any system, basically any list of moral rules everyone who is a moral realist agrees on?

I know I had an atheist professor in that same CC. He was kind of intolerant towards people who believed in God. I could tell they made him impatient, and then angry. Since he wasn't converting any of us to atheist. Or at least as many as he wanted. (He was in the news in 2001, after 9-11. He had an altercation with a devout Muslim student. The story was interesting, because it was hard to tell who was at fault. The Muslim student did disrupt class. But then my teacher ordered him out and threw his bookbag at him.) But he said something interesting once. He told us he was very against religion of any kind. But he admitted. When it came to the Ten Commandments, he only disagreed with the first four. The ones having to do with religion and God. The next six were fine with him, really, he told us.

And the American Humanist Association has its own ten commandments, or moral rules. They are basically promote human welfare, be skeptical always, do no harm to your fellow man, treat all peoples equally, use only science to guide you, respect beliefs different than yours, avoid all superstition and irrational belief, be altruistic too whenever possible, save the planet and share your knowledge with others and future generations too.

I know I first read the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from the French Revolution (1789) in 1988 or 9. And their definition of when conduct is moral is freedom consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others. And that the only restraints on human behavior is ensuring other members of society the enjoy the same rights. Which really struck a chord with me at the time. And the French still claim that is the best system of rules, even all these years later. And I, like most people today would add to that, that rule should be tempered with the rule, only if it involves consenting adults.

I know one definition of non-naturalism is that moral rules are only know intuitively in the human mind. Which sounds a little like emotivism. And that causes problems, not only from person to person in a culture. But even with internal conflict. Because like J. J. C. Smart says in Utilitarianism: For and Against, sometimes we even disagree with ourselves, depending on what mood we are in that day.

So has anyone set down a list of rules for normative ethics, using non-naturalism and moral realism as a base? And what is that list? Has a list like that even been written down?

 

Good job! Another thoughtful and thought-provoking post, of the kind we've come to expect from you. Don't be surprised if you don't get many responses, since it's probably over the heads of most readers. My compliments to your CC ethics teacher!I don't have time to do it justice, but for now there are a few points I'd like to respond to.

For the benefit of your readers, a moral realist is one who thinks moral rules are real--i.e., objective, as opposed to being subjective or relative to the believer and his/ her culture. A team of British anthropologists from Oxford recently identified seven universal principles that seem to hold across 60 different societies or cultures
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/701478
Seven moral rules found all around the world | University of Oxford
These principles are : (1) family values, (2) group loyalty, (3) reciprocity (do unto others...), (4) bravery, (5) respect/deference, (6) fairness, and (7) property rights.
Of course the particular rules for achieving these may vary from society to society, but the fact that cultural anthropologists could agree on any at all is remarkable, since they are notoriously resistant to such an idea. The principles were derived from the notion that morality is derived from the human need to co-operate--an evolutionary imperative for human survival. Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson thinks that early on in pre-human evolution, humans developed separate modules in their brains for selfish and co-operative instincts. The Meaning of Human Existence (2014). Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker agrees that, on the basis of the latest cognitive research, the models that best fit human behavior are the Judeo-Christian (competition between devil on one shoulder, angel on the other) and Freudian psychoanalysis (ego mediating between id and superego). The Blank Slate,(2002) p.40.

Better some than none! but I think it's too bad he threw out what to Jesus were the most important ones: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (which He and called "the first and greatest commandment.") "And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' " He told us: "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 37-39; Mark 12:31.) Actually, the "commandments" He was talking about weren't in the list of Ten, but are found elsewhere in the Law of Moses: Deuteronomy 6:5-15:21 and Leviticus 19:18, respectively. which are also part of the Law given to Moses. Maybe your atheist teacher was a literalist, and was thinking of God as the bearded Dude in the Sky in the robe with the lightning bolts instead of the Ground of Being God as “Ground of Being” - Paul Tillich , and idolatry as being the worship of figures of sticks, stone and/or clay instead of the more general set of false values Muslims call shirk al- asghar , hidden idolatry, including wealth, status, power, sensual indulgence, and other ephemera--what Buddhists call Upādāna (attachments) or taṇhā (craving), leading to dukkha (suffering). They are blind alleys in th human quest for meaning. God is (among other things), ultimate value. God and Other Ultimates (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Tillich defined religion as "ultimate concern". Paul Tillich – Religion as “Ultimate Concern”

Where most scientists and philosophers are concerned, I doubt that they subscribe to a single common ethic. Both subscribe to the quest for knowledge and truth. Scientists adhere to a set of norms including objectivity, honesty and accuracy in following scientific procedures for gathering empirical evidence, rigorous testing, and reporting results, and holding their conclusions tentatively, pending further evidence, and basing their conclusions on rigorous testing of empirical evidence. Philosophers are more open to speculation, but rely on reasoned argument. As humans, they may also be influenced by their upbringing, religious affiliations, and cultural norms. Most scientists adhere to some form of ethical realism and naturalism in their occupational roles. Philosophers include ethical relativists and even nihilists.

 

Interesting conceptualization by the author of Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance. It has an elegance to it that some might find appealing--especially intellectuals, whose values seem to "surpass" the others. People,of course, are free to follow it if it appeals to them. The main problem with it is G.E. Moore's "naturalistic fallacy" Jimbee was talking about supra. Moore explained that it is logically impossible to deduce an "ought" out of an "is". Put another way, just because something is common in nature or the sequence of evolution doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for us to doit. Gravity tells us: "Thou shalt not jump off the top of the empire state building. If thou doest this, thou shalt surely make a big splash on Broadway." And that's certainly accurate. But suppose somebody decides to end it all by taking the plunge. What makes it wrong? The fact that Gravity doesn't like it? Biological evolution follows the "ethic" of survival of the fit, with "success" being defined as survival and production of offspring. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't be here. But would that be so wrong? I'm grateful to our chordate ancestor Pikaia to surviving the Burgess decimation, thus enabling us to have this conversation. But evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, thought that if she hadn't made it, there would be something else to take our place--maybe a giant cockroach or a talking fish. In order for natural facts to generate moral imperatives, they have to be endowed with purpose--ours or God's. For example, the Catholic doctrine of natural law makes sense only by assuming, as Paul does, that nature is infused with Divine purpose.

Another problem with Pirsig's hierarchical scheme is that it seems to imply the concept of evolutionary progress: that there is some moral imperative to the way things evolved that makes the more recent developments "better" than those before. That view was popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but has waned under criticism from cultural anthropologists and other relativists. The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory Gould again acknowledged the role of quirks, chance events, and contingencies in the evolutionary process and human history. https://monthlyreview.org/2011/02/01/stephen-jay-goulds-critique-of-progress/ Where cultural evolution is concerned, some nasty, quirky or irrational beliefs can have survival value. Christianity and Islam are the world's largest religions. Prof. Bart Ehrman thinks one of the reasons for Christianity's early success was its exclusivity: Our way or the highway! Why Christianity Succeeded | The Bart Ehrman Blog The same could be said about Islam. The polytheists could and belong to several different mystery religions at once. Taoists today can also be Buddhists or Confucianists.

When we reach level 4, "living patterns that surpass social patterns", we seem to be on our own. Individuals thinking about the flight of birds can also think about the nature of good and evil, and ask why their lives should be dictated by blind evolutionary forces, or even why they should be good when "nice guys finish last"? Our country seems to be divided on that issue, with 'follow the leader" competing with "love thy neighbor" as maxims, even among so-called Christians. I favor a modified form of J.S. Mill's version of utilitariansm: the greatest happiness for the greatest number--happiness being defined in qualitative terms, with "higher" values (poetry, privacy, etc.) taking precedence over "lower ones" (pushpin, pornography, etc.)--circumscribed by Rawls contractarian principles of greatest equal liberty and that inequalities must be shown to work to the advantage of society's least advantaged. Intuitively, this seems to be the fairest approach and the one most likely to avoid Hobbes' war of all against all, in which life will be "nasty, brutish and short."

 

But what makes any of it right or wrong? Seems to me Pirsig's Dynamic Quality favoring the later arrivals on the evolutioary level all comes down to his opinion, and of course those who agree with him. And when we get to Level 4, that some people's interests are more important than others, depending on their intellect and level of reflection, we seem to be in danger of the Frankenstein or mad scientist syndrome.
Lila Notes, Pt. 3: Pirsig’s Teleological Hierarchy | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog
Lila Notes, Pt. 5: Pirsig, Philosophology, and Crankism | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals - Wikipedia

 

I have the same problem with Pirsig. Pirsig is certainly a brilliant, if eccentric, visionary who "thinks outside the box." In terms of his own theory, we could put him at the very top of the evolutionary ladder. And he certainly took on an ambitious task--trying to unite western and eastern ideas of value into a metaphysical framework of Hegelian proportions--at a time when metaphysics was out of fashion in academic circles. We need thinkers like that to keep philosophy from sinking into the second level of social conformity. But I think there are flaws in the edifice which seriously limit its usefulness as a guide to moral decisions. Blogger Linsenmayer, another eccentric amateur philosopher who wrote four articles on Pirsig's Lila, seems to agree.

Lila, which presents the fourfold evolutionary model you outlined for us, is an expansion of ideas about Quality or "the good" which Pirsig introduced in his influential philosophical novel: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That book introduced western audiences to Zen values of being "in the moment" and intuitive perception of the ineffable. Lila is a sequel, in which the protagonist, Phaedrus (named after Plato's dialogue) trades his motorcycle for a boat, his son for a messed up ex-hooker Lila (named after a Hindu term corresponding to Quality), and the road for the Hudson (a metaphor for the River of Life, or perhaps Al Franken's Long River in Africa?) Anyhow, it was less well received, cuz the story was short and bleak and IMO and apparently also Linsenmayer's, the philosophy was long and hard to follow.

Of course, the problem might be that Lindsenmayer and I might be operating on a lower level than Pirsig, and not "in the know". Ironically, I, a Native American, have never used Peyote, which Pirsig experienced as "a mushroom cloud of thought". I've also not been diagnosed "scihzophrenic' (yet), unlike Pirsig--obviously a wrong perpetrated by psychiatrists stuck at the social stage. So I'm admittedly not one of the cognoscenti. However, if this framework is intended as a "list of rules for moral realism" that ordinary folks can use, I think it falls short in clarity and objectivity. Llisenmayer's critique, if I understand it, is that Pirsig's moral hierarchy that you gave us rests on a somewhat shaky foundation. Why should evolution, presumably a blind process, dictate our values? And why should our moral choices be influenced by the sequence of the evolutionary process?

According to Pirsig, everything has value, but apparently some things have more value than others--depending on where they fit in the evolutionary hierarchy. He tells us (p. 152):"the value that holds the molecules of a glass together is organic; the value that holds a nation together is social." But really the value that holds a planet together is inorganic. So which is more important? The nation or the planet? And we need to sort out what attributing value at any level means. Does he mean that particular things have intrinsic value. Or do they have value because humans value them to some degree. I think the latter, but the way Pirsig puts it , it somtimes sounds like the former. His hierarchyincorporates teleological thinking reminiscent of Aristotle. As previously mentioned, Morality entails intention or will. Teleology, or the Aristotelian notion of "final cause", gives moral purpose or goals to such facts. An acorn's purpose is to become an oak. "Water seeks its own level". Metaphorically, such ideas may be useful, but modern science tends to reject their literal interpretation. Acorns have a natural tendency to grow into oak trees, and water does tend to rise to its own level, but neither acorns nor water has goals or intentions of its own. Confusing function or tendency with purpose has been a source of superstition from animism to Catholic Aristotelian Thomism. When you talk about plants having a "notion" of good and evil" in a literal sense, you're attributing to them a level of mental development that goes beyond available evidence.Debunking a myth: plant consciousness

I wouldn't say "certainly". The notions that plants are "aware" of anything, in the sense of having sentience and cognition, is controversial. There is some recent experimental evidence to that effect The radical new experiments that hint at plant consciousness https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz/but nothing that can be called "certain". "Some scientists believe plants may have a form of consciousness, but the evidence is still inconclusive." Debunking a myth: plant consciousness The findings have been hotly disputed in the scientific community. Debunking a myth: plant consciousness Plants have sensibilities, but are they conscious? See in particular the 2910 article by Taiz et al https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/abstract/S1360-1385(19)30126-8 "Plants have not been shown to perform the proactive, anticipatory behaviors associated with consciousness, but only to sense and follow stimulus trails reactively; electrophysiological signaling in plants serves immediate physiological functions rather than integrative-information processing as in nervous systems of animals, giving no indication of plant consciousness; and the controversial claim of classical Pavlovian learning in plants, even if correct, is irrelevant because this type of learning does not require consciousness. Debunking a myth: plant consciousness" Plants are life forms, and of course respond to their environments, but to attribute conscious or awareness to this is a stretch. We know that certain things are "good" or "bad" for plants, but to attribute these sentiments to plants themselves is probably a human projection. (See discussion of teleology supra.) It is human empathy for plants that gives them moral significance, and human empathy for them is far from universal.

Yes, the levels co-exist. Which to my way of thinking makes his model confusing. My understanding of the Pirsig ladder is that the wants and needs of beings at the higher levels take precedence over those at the lower levels in cases of conflict. What happens if the grass's right to stay alive (biological level) conflicts with my neighbors' demand for a neat lawn (social patterns of value) and my own desire to sit on my lazy ass and philosophize on HF while the neighbors are out mowing? ("intellectual level?") If it were solely up to me, I'd let the grass grow until I get a notice from the fire marshal that it's become a hazard, but eventually the social pressure wins out and I get out there with my mower. Some folks might sort it out differently. In hippie neighborhoods, the lawn might grow wild as a wildlife sanctuary, but the real contest would still be among humans with different values. Lawns don't get a say in the matter!

Now you're talking! To the best of our knowledge, only humans have opinions about right and wrong. They may have beliefs about animal rights, plant rights, etc. But rights are a human concept. The animals and plants have no opinions on the matter. Humans "developed static social patterns of what good and bad reproductive acts are. Same with religion, which single cell organisms, plants, and animals seem to lack.

No, I'd never say that. Evolution, both biological and cultural, is a messy process, and not infrequently takes turns that were adaptive at the time, but later became impediments to development. Christianity triumphed over its pagan rivals by (inter alia) its greater exclusiveness, its superior hierarchical organization, and an ancient book purporting to have the definitive answers to the grand scheme of the cosmos. From an evolutionary standpoint it deserves an A++, in the sense of aiding the survival and spread of its memes. But of course the folks operating the hierarchy were all too human, and the ancient book had its limitations if taken literally as a scientific treatise. Both the Pope and Galileo showed their human frailties during the encounter. Most historians believe that Galileo's trial had less to do with his belief in Copernican heliocentrism, than with the political threat it presented to papal authority at a sensitive time when the Church was dealing with the Protestant Reformation. The Church would have had to reinterpret passages of Scripture that it previously deemed settled. Pope Urban VIII gave Galileo the go-ahead to write about his theory, so long as he would not describe it as conclusive truth. Instead, Galileo was deemed to have violated that understanding, and used the pope's counter-arguments to the contrary as a foil. The Pope was pissed! Galileo wasn't charged with heresy, but he was found guilty of the lesser charge, "suspicion of heresy", and was forced to recant and to spend the rest of his life in a loosely enforced house arrest. After the incident, the Church supported research into the validity of heliocentrism. Timothy Moy (2001) "Science, Religion and The Galileo Affair.", Skeptical Inquirer, vol 25: pp. 43-45.https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2001/09/22164801/p43.pdf (Moy is professor of the history of science at the University of New Mexico.)

But consider another scenario. A man named Hitler, regarded as a genius by his followers, draws on the "science" of eugenics to challenge the right of Jews to exist. It would be much better for the race, he argues, if they were all exterminated. And he takes power and proceeds to carry out his plan. Should we resist him or suppose that he should be respected for operating on the higher intellectual level, as opposed to the social norms which treats Jews as equals?

And that's what makes it so hard for me to understand in concrete terms. "Progressive" and "regressive" are value judgments. Pirsig presents us with what appears to be a moral hierarchy based on evolution, but then reminds us that the earlier stages co-exist with the latter ones, and that the later ones take some kind of precedence over the former ones. Where do I stand in respect to my lawn and my neighbors? Evolution might not care if humans exist or become extinct, but evolution is mindless and humans might decide that survival and reproduction aren't the be all and end all to our existence.

 

I agree. But I'll have to respond piecemeal because of limited time. I'm entertaining a house guest.

Yes, that is a FACT--an "is". To avoid the naturalistic fallacy, Pirsig has to show that it is an "ought", serving as a guide to what people should do. How does he do this?

Pirsig is saying that. The argument escaped me.

I'd say No, except in a strictly metaphorical sense. Like the Joyce Kilmer poem "Trees":A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray".

Webster's defines "aware" as: "having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge." No one has shown yet that trees or sunflowers have such properties. Phototropism is indeed a response of plants to light, driven by the phytohormone auxin which concentrates on the shaded side, not because it "wants" to, but because export PIN proteins push the auxin out of one cell from one cell to another until they reach that side, not because the Pin proteins want to because the kinzate enzyme[/B] activates them--not because it wants to but because that's what the kinzate enzyme does. B. C. Willige, S. Ahlers,et al, (2013). "D6PK AGCVIII Kinases Are Required for Auxin Transport and Phototropic Hypocotyl Bending in Arabidopsis". The Plant Cell.
In other words, to the best of our knowledge, it's a purely mechanical process!

I think Pirsig's usage here lacks precision. To the best of our knowledge, only humans and thinking beings have values. I'll pick up here later.

 

I'm not sure how productive it would be to go much further with this. Let me just state at the outset my problems with Pirsig's system and get into an area that I have some personal knowledge of: Native Americans and their beliefs. Some of my own personal beliefs are similar in some respects to Pirsig, but I hold them tentatively, pending empirical validatiion. I'm skeptical of grand metaphysical systems that try to link morality to all of reality, especially when they may be influenced by psychedelic drugs and highly impressionistic methodology. I also tend to think that developing philosophical ideas in the context of a novel can be a source of confusion. I thought his first attempt in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance pulled it off effectively, but Lila struck me as kinda lame.

Let's start with his concept of Quality, which seems to me to be the shaky foundation for his metaphysical structure. He says Quality is ineffable. Being religious, I'm used to the ineffable, but as a rationalist and an empiricist, I'd like to see more evidence. Quality, for Pirsig, is direct experience that transcends abstractions. As a Native American, I was particularly interested in what he says about our spirituality and how it relates to eastern thought. Phaedrus (Pirsig) There is an interesting passage in Chapter 4 where the protagonist Phaedrus vents his wrath on anthropologists, particularly those who follow in the footsteps of George Boaz. And what was their sin? Apparently, excessive objectivity and under-generalizing from culture to another--and not taking amateurs like him seriously. He complains: "It is not enough when someone with no training or experience spends on night on a reservation in a teepee full of Indians taking an hallucinagenic drug." Anthropology is "rigged and stacked in such a way that everything he had so say about Indians would be unacceptable." (I dunno. I think scholars have a right to be skeptical in reviewing manuscripts that make bold generalizations based on a night of camaraderie with a bunch of Native Americans using an hallucinogen).

Phaedrus (aka Pirsig) seems to be taken by the "Native American" concept of Manitou, a diffuse, impersonal, omnipresent "life force", energy, or power that permeates and animates physical reality. (Think Henri Bergson's Elan Vitale.) I don't know what reservation he was on--apparently one somewhere on "the eastern plains". Manitou is specifically an Algonquian concept, although similar to the Lakota's Wakan, the Iroquois Orenda, etc. The tribes I hang with have a more personal traditional supreme deity heading a polytheistic hierarchy, although the Ponca and Osage have their Wakanda. It's not unlike the Polynesian idea of Mana. Pirsig notes the similarity to the Asian Tao. Anyhow, anthropologists tell us belief in such forces, which they call animatism (R.R. Marett, 1900)--not to be confused with animism, the belief that individual spirits inhabit natural objects and phenomena. Animatism is common but not universal in primal religions. The thing about it is that it is intuited without the need of reasoning or proof. Taking that step is essentially a leap of faith, although Pirsig might not think of it that way.

Naming the unknown carries risks when coupled with the western propensity for reasoned elaboration. Science has identfied "dark matter" and "dark energy' as important parts of our reality. Dark Matter & Dark Energy - NASA Science Dark matter, which scientists tell us, makes up 27% of the cosmos, "exists in a vast, web-like structure that winds through the whole universe – a gravitational scaffold that attracts most of the cosmos’ normal matter." Dark Matter & Dark Energy - NASA Science "Dark energy", making up 68% of the cosmos, is even more mysterious. It is inferred, to account for the universe's accelerating expansion, but nothing much else is known about it. And then there is the multiverse. Vilenkin's theory of "eternal inflation" led to speculation that multiple "inflation universes may have led to multiple universes.The Case for Parallel Universes | Scientific American This has become a springboard for further speculation about parallel universes. They are invoked to explain the integrated complexity of our universe, and have inspired speculation about an alternative world where the fanatical Christian Meagain and the militant atheist Tishomingo are locked in eternal arguments on the right-wing social media site Alternative HF.

TBC