Define: God

[warpus]

The 'source' comes from the fact that we're thinking, biological beings that can experience harms, ills, love, well-being, hate, etc. The judge is how these things that objectively exist turn out after a moral decision is made and acted upon.

You know, I actually agree that to a degree & biologically speaking such an objective source is perhaps possible, in the short term. It would be tied to our biology though and not be universally objective.

You've also got to accept that there are cultural differences in terms of what sort of morality you get. A lot of people will immediately jump up and start calling you racist when you say that - but consider this example: In some cultures it is moral to tip a cabbie - but in some it is immoral. Whether people like it or not, culture has a bearing on the moral system in use and even the moral system people there would want if they had a choice.

The outcome is utterly dependent upon the states of the two participants. Whether an action hurts, harms, helps, hinders, or nurtures the downstream sentient is utterly predictable if you have enough information. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of wishing from the acting person can change the outcome of the interaction with regards to who he acted upon. I can have a panel of a billion judges, each declaring that skinning Susie will actually help her, that she'll thrive as a result. The entire society can have been wrong. The morality of the behaviour was never under their influence. Skinning Susie killed her. She gone. Her ability to thrive was taken away. And, the society is objectively less than it was as a result, it's less healthy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you are describing is utilitarianism - an ethical and moral framework.

So I guess my question to you is why you think that this particular moral framework, which I don't think any society on the planet really uses to a great extent, is the moral framework that the Universe runs on. There would also need to be some sort of a scientific theory and falsifiable theories put forth, so that we could check whether the universe does indeed run on such a moral code.

See, I don't think that the universe runs on a moral code. I think morality just sorts of arises as a consequence of sentient creatures like us running around and making our way through life. We built up a civlization, societies, and moral codes. And as a consequence, you are right - actions have reactions and consequences, and in the end you can judge whether an overall increase or decrease in goodness was achieved. This increase or decrease of goodness by an action has an objective answer - if you could calculate the "goodness quotient", which is in theory possible. What's subjective is that this particular moral framework might not be the one that "the universe runs on". It's just utitarianism, so.. I mean, maybe it runs on another one? You don't know - so you can't assume.

If there is a morality inherent to the universe, I haven't heard anyone ever discovering any evidence for such a thing, nor do I really see why it would need to exist - unless you have a sentient operator in the first place (A God, or whoever).. I mean, why would the universe run on a moral code, if it's possible that humans or any other intelligent species never arose? That was all a roll of the dice. Seems weird that there would be laws hardwired into the universe that keep morality in mind - unless you have someone behind the scenes setting things up and/or organizing stuff.

 

[_random_]

I like David Bentley Hart's summary defintion:

To speak of “God” properly, then—to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of Orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Baháí, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things. God so understood is not something poised over against the universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a “being,” at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all.

 

[bhavv]

I am now God, as per my new custom title.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

I am now God, as per my new custom title.

god the ego...

 

[Borachio]

I am now God, as per my new custom title.

I bet you think this is a joke. But you probably don't know how right you are, I fear.

 

[bhavv]

I bet you think this is a joke. But you probably don't know how right you are, I fear.

No, I literally am God. I created the universe. I am reincarnation of Vishnu.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

No, I literally am God. I created the universe. I am reincarnation of Vishnu.

Its Brahma, dude. Vishnu is the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Get the fact about yourself straight...

 

[bhavv]

Oh ... doh. I am Brahma.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Oh ... doh. I am Brahma.

Lets start at the beginning. Shall we? You dont know who you are...

 

[Borachio]

...nor do you have any idea how those stains on your trousers got there.

 

[El_Machinae]

You know, I actually agree that to a degree & biologically speaking such an objective source is perhaps possible, in the short term. It would be tied to our biology though and not be universally objective.

Yeah, sure. At this point we're in a quibble with vocabulary. I still think it's universally objective, just at a more meta-level. It's not just tied to our biology, but to our unique circumstance.

My analogy with Farm Boy stands here, too. Some times a glass of water is good for you, some times it's bad for you. The underlying laws are objective. Yeah, biology matters. I'll never deny that. Biology is a huge component of how 'hurt' and 'help' actualize. Putting my feet near my dog's face, for him to lick, really depends on his underlying biology enjoying it. I'd rarely do that to a friend.

You've also got to accept that there are cultural differences in terms of what sort of morality you get. A lot of people will immediately jump up and start calling you racist when you say that - but consider this example: In some cultures it is moral to tip a cabbie - but in some it is immoral. Whether people like it or not, culture has a bearing on the moral system in use and even the moral system people there would want if they had a choice.

Oh, sure. Circumstances matter. And, the nuance of the circumstances changes whether an action leads to greater or lesser health. Of a person. Of an interaction. Of a society.

But, this doesn't make morality subjective. It merely means that it's nuanced.

When I multiply 2 by a number, sometimes it's positive and sometimes it's negative. But, the laws of mathematics are objective.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you are describing is utilitarianism - an ethical and moral framework.

Nearly. I'm almost saying 'not quite', in that people often see Utilitarianism as a spur to think in aggregates. "average happiness" and so on. It measures the group, whereas morality affects individuals.

I haven't heard anyone ever discovering any evidence for such a thing, nor do I really see why it would need to exist - unless you have a sentient operator in the first place (A God, or whoever).. I mean, why would the universe run on a moral code, if it's possible that humans or any other intelligent species never arose? That was all a roll of the dice. Seems weird that there would be laws hardwired into the universe that keep morality in mind - unless you have someone behind the scenes setting things up and/or organizing stuff.

Oh! This might be where it comes together.
Yes, morality absolutely needs sentient organisms (and people) to exist. Just like, the laws of nutrition need living organisms to exist. But we do have sentient organisms and people. And, the laws of the universe pre-determine whether Action A would harm that sentient or would help that sentient. No one decided that. You just need things like 'hurt' and 'help' to exist. They don't exist until you have people, sure. But, once you have people, they're really there.

The action "me skinning Susie alive would harm her" was fundamentally written into the laws of the universe from the Big Bang. Pain, malice, suffering, love, affection, pleasure ... They're all the result of natural laws no one decided. Yes, you need to have people for there to be morality. But, people exist.

The laws of nutrition objectively exist for our body, likewise, the laws of social behavior also objectively exist in basically the same way. They're nuanced and hard. And people will get them wrong, often. But the universe doesn't care what you think, your wishes don't affect when a moral action increased or decreased the health of the interaction.

I mean, it does care, kinda. Just like the placebo effect can affect the nutritional content of a food. But ehn, we still know nutritional laws are objective.

 

[Smote]

Say you have a collection of people, x,y,z,w,... Each person values their own well-being and other peoples well-being at different weights A,B,C,D,...

I think this eqn is a good guide to morality:

Ax+By+Cz+Dw+...=agg. well-being

A is a function of the viewer such that A=0.5 if viewer is x, A = 0.2 if viewer is y, A = 0 if viewer is z, etc. This is the "nuance" that El Mac referred to.

So for x, A =0.5, B = 0.2, C =0.3, D,E,F,... = 0. Or something like this.
For y, A=0.2, B=0.5, C=0.3, D,E,F,... = 0. The values for these are free for each person to choose for themself

Consider x2 to be the well-being of each person if choice 2 is taken. Consider x1 to be the well-being of each person if choice 1 is taken. Etc.

So to decide the morality of an action, compare:
Integration (Ax+By+Cz+Dw+...)dt from now to say, 10 years from now. Each variable could potentially change with time, which makes it more complicated. If we assume that A,B,C,D,... doesn't, we'd get AInt(x)dt+BInt(y)dt+...

To compare this to a different choice, we could subtract them and get
A(Int(x1-x2)dt)+B(Int(y1-y2)dt)+... = Change(Summed future well-being)

If we don't make the assumption in regards to A,B,C,D being constant, we'd get:
Int(A1x1-A2x2)dt+Int(B1y1-B2y2)dt+... = Change(Summed future well-being)

If this is positive or zero for all people, then it's a moral action. If whether it's positive or negative varies with each person, it's indeterminate. If it's negative or zero for all people, then it's an amoral action.

This requires assumptions that well-being is the sole metric of morality and this weighted summing eqn w/ A,B,C,D,... >=0 for all people is how we aggregate morality.

Hopefully this wasn't incomprehensible. It requires an understanding that this integration is essentially summing up a bunch of instantaneous well-beings at each tiny time interval.

This version implies that morality is subjective, since it depends on each person's beliefs and biases. However, these beliefs and biases are based somehow on the biological makeup of their brain, so it could be objective too. I don't think the usual sense of "objective" and "subjective" are necessarily entirely separate.

 

[Borachio]

Isn't that just utilitarianism, though?

My model is a great deal simpler: we're all, in effect, amoral agents in an amoral Universe.

 

[bhavv]

I'm not even going to try to read any of what Smote wrote. I see algebra, and blabber, and my brain yells out nope.

Stop trying to overcomplicate my existence QQ.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Say you have a collection of people, x,y,z,w,... Each person values their own well-being and other peoples well-being at different weights A,B,C,D,...

I think this eqn is a good guide to morality:

Ax+By+Cz+Dw+...=agg. well-being

A is a function of the viewer such that A=0.5 if viewer is x, A = 0.2 if viewer is y, A = 0 if viewer is z, etc. This is the "nuance" that El Mac referred to.

So for x, A =0.5, B = 0.2, C =0.3, D,E,F,... = 0. Or something like this.
For y, A=0.2, B=0.5, C=0.3, D,E,F,... = 0. The values for these are free for each person to choose for themself

Consider x2 to be the well-being of each person if choice 2 is taken. Consider x1 to be the well-being of each person if choice 1 is taken. Etc.

So to decide the morality of an action, compare:
Integration (Ax+By+Cz+Dw+...)dt from now to say, 10 years from now. Each variable could potentially change with time, which makes it more complicated. If we assume that A,B,C,D,... doesn't, we'd get AInt(x)dt+BInt(y)dt+...

To compare this to a different choice, we could subtract them and get
A(Int(x1-x2)dt)+B(Int(y1-y2)dt)+... = Change(Summed future well-being)

If we don't make the assumption in regards to A,B,C,D being constant, we'd get:
Int(A1x1-A2x2)dt+Int(B1y1-B2y2)dt+... = Change(Summed future well-being)

If this is positive or zero for all people, then it's a moral action. If whether it's positive or negative varies with each person, it's indeterminate. If it's negative or zero for all people, then it's an amoral action.

This requires assumptions that well-being is the sole metric of morality and this weighted summing eqn w/ A,B,C,D,... >=0 for all people is how we aggregate morality.

Hopefully this wasn't incomprehensible. It requires an understanding that this integration is essentially summing up a bunch of instantaneous well-beings at each tiny time interval.

I see you are promoting some kind of Calculus Communism here.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few indeed!

This version implies that morality is subjective, since it depends on each person's beliefs and biases. However, these beliefs and biases are based somehow on the biological makeup of their brain, so it could be objective too. I don't think the usual sense of "objective" and "subjective" are necessarily entirely separate.

And now humans, stamped from the same mold, are interchangeable cogs in the equations of science!
And once you are in charge, some letters become more equal than others.
If x=Smote, then all other letters are eliminated by firing squad and the Moral Equation becomes M=Int(Ax)dt



Seriously though, loved your post.
If I understand right, A equals how much a person's well being is valued, and x equals how much a decision actually affects a person's well being?

 

[warpus]

My analogy with Farm Boy stands here, too. Some times a glass of water is good for you, some times it's bad for you. The underlying laws are objective.

Indeedly doodly! However, the difference is that in the case of biology there is only one objective framework that could possibly be true - the one that is. This is because biology relies on natural laws - and so is objective.

In terms of morality, there are many possible frameworks: utilitarianism, one inspired by the Bible, humanism, one inspired by Sharia law, and many other ones. That is the difference. How do we know which framework to pick?

The action "me skinning Susie alive would harm her" was fundamentally written into the laws of the universe from the Big Bang. Pain, malice, suffering, love, affection, pleasure ... They're all the result of natural laws no one decided. Yes, you need to have people for there to be morality. But, people exist.

Yes, but the moral framework in which this is viewed and which provides context - this part needs to be selected by someone. Person A might go with moral framework a1 and person B might go with moral framework b1. How do we know which moral framework "the universe went with" ?

You say that it is the framework which you have described, the one that's similar to utilitarianism. But how do you know that is the one that the universe runs on? You made a subjective choice to pick that moral framework - out of many frameworks that exist.

 

[Borachio]

I'm not even going to try to read any of what Smote wrote. I see algebra, and blabber, and my brain yells out nope.

Stop trying to overcomplicate my existence QQ.

What he's done is not actually that complicated.

But the basic premises - that you can assign values to things like moral actions, and even work out some kind of function for how morality changes over time - those seem entirely bogus, imo.

And utilitarianism is pretty much a no-hoper in any case.

 

[El_Machinae]

In terms of morality, there are many possible frameworks: utilitarianism, one inspired by the Bible, humanism, one inspired by Sharia law, and many other ones. That is the difference. How do we know which framework to pick?

Well, that's a learning process, for sure. Human's are imperfect, so the best we can do is get better over time.

The analogy here is still strong. Do we choose the Atkin's diet? The South Beach diet? The cabbage soup diet?

The best we can do is muddle along. The universal laws of nutrition don't care about our theorizing or fads. The objectively superior of the three exists already, and it's got nothing to do with what we think.

You say that it is the framework which you have described, the one that's similar to utilitarianism. But how do you know that is the one that the universe runs on? You made a subjective choice to pick that moral framework - out of many frameworks that exist.

It's the only one available. As you said, morality is how we decide whether an action was 'good' or 'bad'. And, the action exists between pairs of participants. The outcome objectively exists. Each sentient can measure whether an outcome was good, always. We're biologically determined to have that ability.

The other frameworks are silly. They'll call up down, and down up, and they're wrong. They'll look at a moral framework, see that it causes a lack of thriving and a surplus of pain, and then call it 'good'. That's just not what 'good' is. To remove a moral framework from its outcomes changes the nature of what we're gunning for.

It's like people who insist Atkins is by definition the perfect diet and then have nuanced conversations about whether coconut fat or olive fat is superior. Now, one of those two variants WILL be superior to the other, but calling any deviation from the Atkins diet even if it helps 'wrong' is just missing the point of why the diet exists in the first place.

It's the health of the outcomes that matters. I won't deny, though, that some people seem to taint what morality is. They lose sight of the fact that its goal is to figure out "what is best". Our sentient biologies intrinsically measure what's best. The measurement system was never designed, it just is.

 

[warpus]

It's the only one available. As you said, morality is how we decide whether an action was 'good' or 'bad'. And, the action exists between pairs of participants. The outcome objectively exists. Each sentient can measure whether an outcome was good, always. We're biologically determined to have that ability.

The other frameworks are silly.

You say they're silly, but most of the planet would disagree with you. Most of the planet uses moral frameworks that do not at all correspond to the one you are trying to say is THE moral framework that is lying underneath every single action performed by any sentient creature in the universe.

See how picking the "right" moral framework is subjective? You can't prove that the one you have picked is any better than the other ones. You can argue it - and you can provide good arguments, but you can't prove it.

With gravity, it is possible to prove such a thing. You just check if your framework properly predicts gravity or not - and then you run tests to see if it works out. No such thing is possible with morality.

 

[El_Machinae]

They're still silly.

Your comparison with gravity is a good one. You need a measurable outcome. The fact that there's a measurable outcome means that what you're measuring objectively exists. People have a great theory of 'gloopglop' that they say is the true theory of gloopglop. But, it leads to no observable events. It depends on nothing real existing. In fact, it kind depends on the idea that stuff doesn't really happen. What this theory is, though, is not a theory of gravity. It doesn't matter if they insist it is. And, if clever and detailed use of the theory of gloopglop results in our inability to measure and observe gravity, it's very much not a theory of gravity. The theory of gravity allows you to see what is. It allows you to predict what will happen. The consequences of gravity are hard-coded into the universe.

It's nearly a tautology.

Again, outcomes exist as a result of moral decisions. They're real things. They're hard-coded as a fundament of reality. There can be gazillion moral codes, but that doesn't matter. All moral decisions have an outcome. The decision objectively exists, the outcome objectively exists.

Any theory that removes the need for a decision and an outcome is basically not a theory of morality. I mean, it's nice. But it's not a theory of morality. Any theory of Euclidian geometery that has pi being a whole number isn't theory of Euclidian geometry. Any meal composed entirely of a very nice tale of superman isn't a meal. etc. etc.

It's like you're insisting on staying one layer below the analogy, kinda. Because some people call Atkins nutritious and some people call South Beach diet nutritious, there're no underlying objective laws of nutrition. The consequences of moral decisions exist. They're objectively real, and they operate according to objective laws. Unless a moral theory has something which its measuring that's based on something real it's a theory of something, but it's not morality.