The Source Of Ethics & Morality For Us ...

[Gabri Rigotti]

Further to a point of discussion between Stephen, Trevor and myself in a another email thread ...

Do we look for a source of ethics and morality within us, specifically in the nature of what we call ourselves as a species, human beings, or in something beyond us?

One example of the latter is a god of sorts … or a more “real world” phenomenon like a “market”, suggested by Stephen?

So it could be a more “real world” phenomenon, external to the “Nature of Us”, or NoU, the "market" phenomenon.

(I have previously proposed replacing Ayn Rand's limited “Nature of Man” by a more comprehensive “Nature of Humans” or NoH with a separate description in another thread but since then I prefer the term “Nature of Us”, or NoU).

Besides lending itself to being a better rolling off the tongue acronym it also emphasises that we are looking for a source of ethics and morality within us, as opposed to one external to us.

That mutually beneficial interactions or market-like exchanges may have preceded the more sophisticated form of communication that we would consider language, which in turn is the incubator of culture should not be too surprising … like for example the birds that sit on the rumps of cattle and harvest ticks to the benefit of both birds and cattle.

Symbiosis …

That could be framed as a market too if we go as generic as possible.

But whatever and however we think about anything, it is highly unlikely to not be anthropomorphic.

Our models of and for anything, be it subatomic particles or the spacetime model, are ultimately our fantasies, products of our imagination.

Whatever is really there as an Absolute, our direct sensory abilities are too limited to “see” It, in absolute terms.

So we have to fantasise about It, using metaphors and or similes, effectively analogies … it is ingenious what we do, powered by the geniuses among us, but ultimately it is all ingenious fantasy.

We have evolved as peculiar sentient beings, aware of ourselves, in a 3D plus flow-of-time sensing of the “world” and we make “sense” of it to improve our “real world” experience of whatever it is that we are swirling around in, to survive, by building a myriad of models of the phenomenons we experience.

One such model is that of the “market”.

So if we are market centric then we would tend to use the lens of the accumulated market theories to explain whatever it is that we wish to explain.

(Another example could be say Marxists: they view the world through the framework of Marxism; intersectionalists do the same, everything is ironically logically "true" to its founding axioms, namely supremacism by one and only one group to the exclusion of any others, past, present, future and the same in parallel universes to the End of Eternity).

The non-disingenuous models can be very useful e.g. the idea that markets exist for the efficient allocation of scarce resources can be a view that can take us far in arguing something or another about what we have decided to anthropomorphically call "markets".

It is nonetheless an anthropomorphic fantasy and, no argument, a very useful one where relevant and appropriate, like the curvature of spacetime to explain gravity and to calculate all sorts of very useful things is an anthropomorphic fantasy in what we call “physics”, yet another anthropomorphic naming of a “something” area of study.

However, that does not necessarily imply that even if “markets” precede “language” and “culture” that they are more fundamental (as a source of ethics and morality for us, and specifically us) than our sense of Self and our ongoing search for the purpose and meaning of our individual lives. Given we are so aware of ourselves as being “individuals” and that even if we remove culture from the equation our natural instinct as human beings (separate from say ants or bees) is to be autonomous it seems to me that this is more “fundamental” for us than the “market” that we have created as a useful model for various things in phenomenons that we sense and inspire us to call them "markets".

The vocabulary used in describing evolution for example is derived from the model we have created for “evolution”.

So we say giraffes adapted to their environment and evolved long necks.

It is just an efficient way, linguistically, to describe phenomena we sense in the context of the model of evolution.

What really happened, "really" in the sense that it is a closer approximation to whatever might be the Absolute if it does indeed exist, is that in the "random distribution" we perceive of the life instances that eventually became what we now call giraffes, natural selection favoured those instances that had a tendency to reach higher …

Over a myriad life and death struggles the environments within which all these lifeforms sought to survive shaped the outcomes of these survival instances … all an accident, incrementing eventually to what we now call giraffes.

However when we use the term “adapted”, if we go dogmatically literal, it almost implies that there was some sort of deliberate strategic and tactical design to collectively “adapt”, a conscious or subconscious one. 

The vocabulary of evolution is figurative and not literal.

Actually almost everything we think, at most levels that we think it, is figurative and not literal.

Ultimately, we can in the context of what it is that we are saying, agree for our "real world" benefit that there is a “literal” sense and a “figurative” sense.

We use the “literals” of simpler and easier to understand notions as the basis for “figuratives” for less simpler and easier to understand notions.

"Markets" are more efficient ways "to allocate scarce resources" than say "central collectivist planning" but when we argue this, it is because we have chosen, as a subjective value based choice, the worthy goal, to be the efficient allocation of scarce resources as the “universal truth” whereby we then compare the "alternatives".

We are always in a subjective philosophical ideological quicksand, but one thing is for sure, when "reality" bites it hurts!

Perhaps our best quest to hope for is that reality hurts less?

 

--

" It is not the water in the fields that brings true development, rather, it is water in the eyes, or compassion for fellow beings, that brings about real development. "

—Anna Hazare

[Stephen vJ]

Basicially;

1. Humans are not special, life has no special meaning, our species is not pivotal and even if we do screw the entire planet up irreparably like the lefties say we are, it means nothing in the bigger scheme of things. Nobody in the rest of the galaxy will care that one little rock went up in flames.

2. To you as an individual there is nothing but your feelings, your perceptions and your life. That is the entire universe and all of existence to you. Your lifespan is the entirety of all time that matters, to you. It follows that not getting bitten, being happy and enjoying life is everything to you.

All meaning, ethics and morality exists purely at the individual level. Some people see a grey area between the atomic units and the great void, but whenever those people try to turn their interpretation into policy a) things go very badly for individuals and b) nothing happens to the universe.

Stephen.

On Aug 13, 2024, at 13:19, Gabri Rigotti <rigo...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Gabri Rigotti]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 10:56 PM Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Basicially;

1. Humans are not special, life has no special meaning, our species is not pivotal and even if we do screw the entire planet up irreparably like the lefties say we are, it means nothing in the bigger scheme of things. Nobody in the rest of the galaxy will care that one little rock went up in flames.

Agreed, yes we are insignificant in the greater scheme of the Cosmos, whatever that figment of our imagination happens to be. The only ones who will care that our "little rock" goes up in flames would be those of us still around, if that happens.

2. To you as an individual there is nothing but your feelings, your perceptions and your life. That is the entire universe and all of existence to you. Your lifespan is the entirety of all time that matters, to you. It follows that not getting bitten, being happy and enjoying life is everything to you.

Agreed… and for “... not getting bitten, being happy and enjoying life“, an “ethics and morality” that will prevail and reduce one's chances of being bitten, not being happy and not being able to enjoy life would be useful …

Why not look for that in a deeper dive into the nature of us … ?

All meaning, ethics and morality exists purely at the individual level. Some people see a grey area between the atomic units and the great void, but whenever those people try to turn their interpretation into policy a) things go very badly for individuals and b) nothing happens to the universe.

Each of us as individuals, as current instances of both a past and present collective of human beings, are a value on any number of applicable attributes that can be discovered and unpacked from the collective of us.

For any of these attributes one can sample a random distribution of instances, and a bell shaped curve will emerge with a mean and a standard deviation about the mean.

We are the outcome of a process of natural selection, and in the six million years that have elapsed since we shared a common ancestor with the great ape branch that has become the chimpanzees, we are a mix of all “sorts of things” that are arguably "human".

For example, in this mix, we all have natural individual tendencies towards say either being altruistic or egoistic or a mix in between.

We tend to have innate senses of “right or wrong”, which will be there even with the removal of culture from the analysis … just the effects of natural selection at the resolution of the individual ... so, in that sense, there is an “ethics and morality” purely at the individual level, differing from one individual to the next, many of the differences slight, others large … 

Despite these differences, there is scope to identify “ethics and morality” that if it prevails in society it will reduce one's chances of being bitten, not being happy and not being able to enjoy life.

The desire to be free, as an individual, is so fundamentally powerful in most of us, that it makes individualism a very promising route to explore for such an “ethics and morality” …

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[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Why not look for that in a deeper dive into the nature of us … ?

The nature of man is to be cruel, violent, selfish and aggressive. Throughout almost the entirety of history, we have plundered, pillaged, enslaved, murdered and waged war. Even today we forcibly tax each other and use the proceeds primarily to fund a standing military, feed regulators and maintain people who's sole aim in life is to govern the rest of us. There is nothing in the nature of man that suggests the slightest inclination towards any kind of moral or ethic code, other than kill or be killed, to dominate or be dominated. We draw arbitrary lines on the ground, hunt down those who cross it and violently force them back. We lock up our youngsters through their most active years, prohibit them from doing anything useful or fun (driving, drinking, smoking, starting businesses, defending their families with guns, etc.) making them sit at benches and recite all manner of propaganda until we're sure they believe it all. In every organization we have, we appoint managers and set up hierarchies which are designed to use force and threat of force to get things done. The nature of man is to oppress and dictate and prescribe... or to sheepishly follow*. That is not the foundation that I would like for any system of morality or ethics. No thank you.

* We know that this is about a 30% : 70% split, from the work of Prof. Altemeyer who passed away earlier this year. See especially his book called The Authoritarians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer

We tend to have innate senses of “right or wrong”

Yes, and most often that sense seems to tell us that it is right to kill our spouses for the insurance money, rather than to just get a divorce. It tells us that somehow the other guy was the inconsiderate jerk in traffic this morning. It seems to tells us that it is wrong for Jeff Bezos to be that rich or for our team to lose the rugby match or for minimum wage to be that low. We think Bernie Sanders is right to call for socialism in America or for Micheal Moore to suggest that we all have worthless (sorry, free) healthcare. Our innate sense of right or wrong is clearly broken. Fundamentally, utterly and irreperably fucked. We need to stay away from that shit as far as we possibly can.

S.

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[Stephen vJ]

I'm going to expand on this some more and say that there can be no code of ethics or system or morality without authoritarianism, force and compulsion. From the view of the individual, everything we feel, think and believe in is moral, ethical, good and right. It is very rare for people to consider themselves bad, evil or in the wrong. Some people do and in most cases you will find that they consider that evil to be necessary or for their known sins to be somehow justified i.e. good and moral. For the individual judging his own case, he will almost always find himself innocent or justified. Ethics and morality therefore cannot reside in the individual.

This may seem to contradict what I said below about morality and ethics being possible only at the level of the individual, but note the difference - morality can only applied to the individual, when we apply it collectively the greater good rears it's deceptive head. It has to be applied only to the individual, but it cannot come from the individual - it has to come from without... a society or a law or a god or a set of clay tablets brought down a mountain by a prophet or decreed by a king or the observed nature of man or imposed by a bully or enforced by a gangster boss... the individual is never objective and cannot judge their own actions clearly and objectively. Thus ethics and morality must necessarily come with some form of authority, hierarchy and / or use of force. It also has to be contrary to the inclinations of most individuals and aim to adjust that inclination, otherwise it would mean nothing and add nothing.

One could presumibly try to come up with a code of ethics or a moral standard which is objective, universal and objectively good, but I think that is impossible and even if it was possible, would still need to be enforced, which would, in my book, automatically make it immoral and unethical.

I therefore wholly reject all morality and ethics on the grounds that it goes against my libertarian principles. I will concede that humans are social creatures and have established some cultural conventions, norms and guidelines by which one can live and be better off than without them, but when those are formalized and codified they invariably turn into the justification of the ruler wielding it as a weapon or becoming the manifesto of a cult leader.

On the whole, other people, particularly family, friends and colleagues, teach us through feedback and example how we should behave. So does the market. I'm inclined to agree with Adam Smith when he says that the good man is shaped in his moral behaviours by the sentiments shared with those around him. A couple of decades later he then says that society is guided to prosperity in the same way as if by an invisible hand. I tend to agree with that and would add that we need not see the hand, it guides all by itself. Screw morality and ethics - all we need is to be free. Those around us will moderate our behaviour sufficiently, with no need for any artificial sweetener.

I can highly recommend reading Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments", because I don't think I can do it justice in a few emails. It puts a plug in just about every moral code I've ever seen.

Stephen.

On Aug 14, 2024, at 15:22, Stephen van Jaarsveldt <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote: