Are we evil?

[thorgrim29]

Are you actually arguing that boom-bust cycles aren't a thing in nature Zrak? Because they really are. The deer example Talya gave is a good example of that, but even without human intervention it happens. You often read about the field-mice/owl relationship, where if there is a few good years for the mice they will reproduce like crazy, leading the owls to reproduce like crazy also, hunt the mice to near-extinction and start dying off/leaving the area.

[warty goblin]

None of those concepts are philosphical. Logic and math are not some fancy human inventions. The are universal truth that is still true even if not a single life form exists to utilize it. Likewise, economics are very important even to non-biological processes that use resources, like the life cycle of stars. Economics is the generation, flow, and consumption of resources. This is not abstract or philosophical.

Whether or not logic and math are human inventions is a matter of some philosophic debate among mathematicians, often phrased as whether math is invented or discovered. Given a particular logic (and the logic generally taught is not unique) and a particular set of axioms and definitions, I find it hard to argue that math isn't discovered, which is to say statements expressed using the axioms and definitions are true before anybody shows them to be so; since their truth depends only on logic, axioms and definitions. However the axioms themselves are made up and beyond the scope of logic, and are at best abstractions of concepts in reality.

It also seems a rather difficult sell to me that stars are meaningfully explicable by economics, when they are perfectly explicable via atomic physics. I can't for instance really think of an economic analog to, say, neutron degeneracy or pulsars for that matter, since pulsars don't 'consume resources' and yet are an entirely predictable result of the consumptive process of certain stars.

[Frozen_Feet]

Thorgrim29: boom-and-bust cycles happen, but they are not just a factor of exponential growth. Plenty of organisms have self-regulatory mechanisms, leading to their growth rates stabilizing or declining way before theoretical limits of food and space are reached. Even something as simple as yeast culture on a petri dish can reach a state of self-regulating equilibrium.

Ergo, boom-and-bust cycles occasionally happening is not strong evidence for them being inevitable, nor is it strong evidence for only humans being capable of self-regulation. Talya may be right that said self-regulation isn't a conscious decision for animals (it certainly isn't for yeast), but the idea that it is one for humans doesn't follow from that and is questionable on itself.

[Florian]

Are we evil?

I think the answer to that question depends on what we accept, either subjective or objective morality.

[TechnOkami]

We are evil... if we choose to be.

[Zrak]

We're not talking about something incredibly difficult, here. The very first dictionary definition will suffice:

Sustainable: 1. able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.

A sustainable practice does not deplete its own resources below the level required to continue the practice.

This isn't really what you were talking about earlier, though. Both my cat's eating habits and the nut-burrying of the squirrels in my backyard are "able to be maintained at a certain rate or level." Yet, those don't meet your standards of "sustainable life practices." Hence my confusion.

Every species engages primarily in sustainable life practices, or they'd have gone extinct long ago. The difference is, for no species other than humans has this ever been a conscious choice. Other species have their sustainable practices imposed upon them by the harsh reality of nature.

So your argument is not that other animals don't engage in sustainable life practices, but that they do not engage in these life practices as a conscious choice? Barring the portions on this which hinge upon fundamentally unknowable aspects of animal cognition, I don't think this is really true. In other words, without getting into a debate about the nature of consciousness or the existence of free will, I can contend at the very least that animals alter their behavior to account for changes in relative resource availability that serve no benefit beyond preventing resource depletion. In fact, I mentioned several examples of red squirrels taking actions that serve to prevent future resource exhaustion, like tracking seed availability and making temporarily heavy use of non-adjacent food-rich areas.

No. Because there is always evidence of an external cause -- the species has not been able to proliferate to the point that they begin seriously depleting their food supply, due to survival challenges. Other times their food source of choice presents a serious challenge to them with regard to catching it.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you. Are you saying that, even if there were no evidence of an external cause, you would believe that there was an external cause, regardless? I don't think that's what you mean, but there's not really another way this makes sense as a response to the question I asked, since I specifically asked about a hypothetical situation in which there was no evidence of an external cause, not whether or not you believed such an example existed.

Take something as simple as the wolf... if you placed a pack of wolves in a very large cage with slow moving and easy to kill prey herds, the pack would grow and grow and the herd would dwindle until there was none left. The wolf would not choose to limit its reproduction to ensure that its food needs did not outstrip the replacement rate of the herd.

I presume you know of an instance in which this was tested that backs up your assertion? Or are you just assuming, absent any evidence at all, that this is what would happen in that scenario?

None of those concepts are philosphical. Logic and math are not some fancy human inventions. The are universal truth that is still true even if not a single life form exists to utilize it. Likewise, economics are very important even to non-biological processes that use resources, like the life cycle of stars. Economics is the generation, flow, and consumption of resources. This is not abstract or philosophical.

Logic most certainly is some fancy human invention. It is a set of abstractions we use to describe independent, concrete events, but that set of abstractions is very much an artificial construct. Mathematics could go either way; I'd personally hedge my bets and argue it contains elements of both discovery and invention.

Are you actually arguing that boom-bust cycles aren't a thing in nature Zrak? Because they really are.

No, I'm not saying boom-bust cycles don't exist. I don't really know what gave you that impression, but my apologies for the confusion. My contention is, like Frozen_Feet said, there is nothing about the existence of boom-bust cycles to imply that they are inevitable and, moreover, a substantial body of evidence to suggest that they are not.

[Talya]

This isn't really what you were talking about earlier, though. Both my cat's eating habits and the nut-burrying of the squirrels in my backyard are "able to be maintained at a certain rate or level." Yet, those don't meet your standards of "sustainable life practices." Hence my confusion.

Your cat is not a species. It is an individual. Cats as a species, however, DO overpopulate and eat all their resources given an opportunity.
Likewise, storing up food does not really help here - it isn't an example of a sustainable practice. If squirrels overpopulated, they'd still die off because they wouldn't be able to store up food for themselves.

So your argument is not that other animals don't engage in sustainable life practices, but that they do not engage in these life practices as a conscious choice?

No. They don't engage in it as an unconscious choice, either. It is not because of anything they have any control over at all. It's because nature KILLS THEM. Squirrels don't run rampant overpopulating their ecosystem, but it's not because squirrels limit their breeding. It's because they have lots of predators, and a low survival rate. We do know other animals don't have this type of cognition, the higher thoughts to understand it simply don't exist, but it doesn't matter. Prehistoric humans were in the same situation - life is harsh. Most things die before they ever reach maturity. Even apex predators have this problem. Modern humans are the first species in the history of this planet to potentially take control of their own fate.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you. Are you saying that, even if there were no evidence of an external cause, you would believe that there was an external cause, regardless? I don't think that's what you mean, but there's not really another way this makes sense as a response to the question I asked, since I specifically asked about a hypothetical situation in which there was no evidence of an external cause, not whether or not you believed such an example existed.

I'm definitely not understanding what you are asking here, at all.

I presume you know of an instance in which this was tested that backs up your assertion? Or are you just assuming, absent any evidence at all, that this is what would happen in that scenario?

Of course this was never tested. However it's incontrovertably what happens with every single type of fauna that has ever lived, except, possibly, humans - who through higher cognition have the ability to avoid it. That's how life operates. It ALL operates like bacteria in a petrie dish. Now, as was mentioned by someone else earlier, some species will start killing off their own kind in response to feeding competition (humans do this, too), but that rather proves my point even more.

Logic most certainly is some fancy human invention. It is a set of abstractions we use to describe independent, concrete events, but that set of abstractions is very much an artificial construct. Mathematics could go either way; I'd personally hedge my bets and argue it contains elements of both discovery and invention.

Logic is true regardless of whether there are any beings there to think it through. Logic is not cognitive, it is truth. (And ultimately, logic is just a type of math. They aren't separate things.)



In any event, the idea of nature being this harmonious wonderful thing that we humans are somehow harming is complete garbage. Nature is a horrific, brutal gauntlet of millions of related species in merciless, cutthroat competition with each other trying to come out on top. And most of them fail, miserably. Through this deathmatch competition, natural selection gleefully (yes I'm anthropomorphizing a process) takes note of what manages to survive long enough to pass on its genes. Over 99% of all species that have ever lived on this rock went extinct before humans even existed. So this concept that humans are somehow evil for having, to a great degree, mastered nature and turned our own existence into something more comfortable than the deathmatch every other species has to deal with* is absurd. We're the only species that is actively trying to preserve nature, rather than simply dominate it. (The rest are too busy struggling to improve their lot.) What the OP is doing is villifying success.

* - The exceptions as far as animals that no longer have a daily struggle just to exist are those that have made themselves useful or desirable in some way to humans. Sure, there's our pets, but even cattle. Nothing resembling the domestic bovine even exists in the wild - Cows avoided extinction by being yummy. Same with chickens. It's a rather effective survival adaptation.

[Zrak]

Your cat is not a species. It is an individual. Cats as a species, however, DO overpopulate and eat all their resources given an opportunity. Likewise, storing up food does not really help here - it isn't an example of a sustainable practice. If squirrels overpopulated, they'd still die off because they wouldn't be able to store up food for themselves.

This is what I meant when I said the definition you just provided doesn't really match what you're saying. You keep defaulting to examples of overpopulation, which isn't what that definition is talking about; the fact that there are rates and levels at which something cannot be maintained (i.e. overpopulation) does not mean there is no rate or level at which it can be maintained. Squirrels can maintain food storage at a certain rate or level, so according to the definition you provided, it is sustainable. Yet, it does not meet your definition of sustainability. Hence my confusion.

No. They don't engage in it as an unconscious choice, either. It is not because of anything they have any control over at all. It's because nature KILLS THEM. Squirrels don't run rampant overpopulating their ecosystem, but it's not because squirrels limit their breeding. It's because they have lots of predators, and a low survival rate.

This only applies specifically to curtailing population levels, though; there are plenty of other behaviors designed to prevent resource exhaustion, even behaviors specifically designed to prevent resource exhaustion in overpopulation conditions. These are, to the extent any behavior is, demonstrably conscious choices; predation and disease do not force red squirrels to change their seed selection preferences or home range size based on resource levels, or to keep track of seed availability in various areas.
If, however, what you meant this entire time was that no other species limits its breeding or makes conscious choices to curtail population, this is also false. Even rabbits, colloquial example of breeding a lot, take behavioral measures to prevent overpopulation conditions.

We do know other animals don't have this type of cognition, the higher thoughts to understand it simply don't exist, but it doesn't matter.

We don't. We assume that they don't, but this really is just fundamentally unknowable with our present resources. We can't look at a creature's behavior or even a brain scan and really say with any meaningful degree of certainty what's going on its head.

I'm definitely not understanding what you are asking here, at all.

I asked if you would accept a species whose behavior ensures its food supply remains intact the following year, absent evidence of an external force causing them to do so, as an example of conscious sustainable life practices. You replied that there is always evidence of an external cause. That does not make sense as a response to the question I asked, since I didn't ask if there was always evidence of an external cause, but rather about a hypothetical behavior for which there were no evidence of an external cause. Specifically would such a behavior meet your standards for a conscious, sustainable life practice. If it would not, why would it not?

Of course this was never tested.

So you're just assuming that would happen. You have no evidence whatsoever to support this contention. About one species that you specifically chose to bring up. Like, even putting aside the fact that your claim here hinges on the idea that all non-human species, despite their vast physiological and behavioral differences, are totally analogous to the behavior you describe in wolves, the behavior you describe is, essentially, a thing you just made up.

However it's incontrovertably what happens with every single type of fauna that has ever lived, except, possibly, humans - who through higher cognition have the ability to avoid it. That's how life operates. It ALL operates like bacteria in a petrie dish. Now, as was mentioned by someone else earlier, some species will start killing off their own kind in response to feeding competition (humans do this, too), but that rather proves my point even more.

That's not really a good summation of what happens in a behavioral sink. Also, that person (Frozen_Feet) was arguing against your point.

Logic is true regardless of whether there are any beings there to think it through. Logic is not cognitive, it is truth. (And ultimately, logic is just a type of math. They aren't separate things.)

Whether something is true has no bearing on whether it exists. Plenty of things in fiction are true without being real.

[Frozen_Feet]

The fungi termites eat require a constant humidity and temperature to thrive. Such conditions do not normally happen where termites live - hence, termites create and maintain mounds of hardened mud which must be of specific size and shape to maintain tose conditions.

An queen bee does not pump out eggs at constant rate. Rather, the class of working females rations how much food it is given to influence the number. Neither do the eggs hatch to be soldiers, workers or drones by chance - the quality of eggs depends on size, shape and temperature of the nest, and these traits are actively engineered by the workers to suit prevailing conditions. All males born outside breeding season are killed.

Ants of one hive actively seek to destroy other ants from other hives - even when there's abundance of space and resources. This doesn't happen when the other hive's ants are of notably different size, nor when queens of the nests are related. Resources are traded between related nests and ants engage in cultivation of plants, fungi and some types of other insects to produce food, rather than just collecting them from their surroundings.

I've not done the math to see how closely the growth rates of these species resembles an exponential curve, but based on specifics of their reproductive cycles, I'd bet "not at all".

Colonial insects are some of the most widespread and succesfull things on Earth. Measured in amount of biomass, just ants added together make up a bigger part of animals on Earth than humans do. They are a vital presence to ecosystems they inhabit - the recent drop-off in number of bees has caused problems to human agriculture world wide.

Invidually, these creatures are not very intelligent. (Well okay, to give ants credit, they can apparently count the distance to their nest from the angle of sunlight.) But as a species, to borrow Talya's rhetoric, they act quite a bit smarter than simple bacteria.

[Murska]

After examining my assumptions, I have to admit that I was wrong. I was attributing the decisions of individual humans, falsely, to some other sort of decision-making process than those of animals. I believe the fundamental error was forgetting that I, myself, am part of nature and therefore my decisions do not and cannot come from anywhere except my own biology and the physical effects of my environment on me.

I post this to encourage people who are struggling to keep up the motivation to argue against strangers who are wrong on the internet. Occasionally, you do succeed.

[Grinner]

I post this to encourage people who are struggling to keep up the motivation to argue against strangers who are wrong on the internet. Occasionally, you do succeed.

I still think mere arguing is a horribly unproductive approach. Mere arguing has ended friendships and marriages and probably has started more than a couple wars. Without practicing some form of conflict management, you're often only going to succeed in upsetting others and achieving nothing of worth.

If I may make an alternate recommendation, argue as you would with a stranger face-to-face. That is, don't antagonize them. If you want to persuade anyone of anything, you must first and foremost be a friend, not an enemy.

[GolemsVoice]

In any event, the idea of nature being this harmonious wonderful thing that we humans are somehow harming is complete garbage. Nature is a horrific, brutal gauntlet of millions of related species in merciless, cutthroat competition with each other trying to come out on top. And most of them fail, miserably. Through this deathmatch competition, natural selection gleefully (yes I'm anthropomorphizing a process) takes note of what manages to survive long enough to pass on its genes. Over 99% of all species that have ever lived on this rock went extinct before humans even existed. So this concept that humans are somehow evil for having, to a great degree, mastered nature and turned our own existence into something more comfortable than the deathmatch every other species has to deal with* is absurd. We're the only species that is actively trying to preserve nature, rather than simply dominate it. (The rest are too busy struggling to improve their lot.) What the OP is doing is villifying success.

* - The exceptions as far as animals that no longer have a daily struggle just to exist are those that have made themselves useful or desirable in some way to humans. Sure, there's our pets, but even cattle. Nothing resembling the domestic bovine even exists in the wild - Cows avoided extinction by being yummy. Same with chickens. It's a rather effective survival adaptation.

This argument has probably been done already, but I'd argue that evil is a category that always implies choice, that is, our ability to chose a course of action also means we have the capability for evil. Now, what people call evil is of course a matter of religion or philosophy, for individuals as well as groups.

But a rabbit, say, let loose in Australia, cannot chose NOT to become a dominant species, even to the extent of other animals. A human, individually, or on any level above, can decide how he wants to earn his living, how he wants to structure society, and all that. Thus a society build on exploiting weaker people might very well be successful, just as a person murdering people for money might make a lot of aforesaid money, but that doesn't mean calling such people evil, if you are so inclined, is "villifying success".

[Devils_Advocate]

The thing is, if you're willing to treat any "moral standard" as self-justifying, then you can base whatever rights you like on self-awareness, but you can just as easily base them on skin color, sex, religion, age, height, weight, preferred brand of toothpaste, or whatever. But if you think, for example, that it's wrong for individuals to be treated better or worse based on things beyond their control, then obviously you think that they shouldn't be given preferential treatment on such a basis.

Heck, the specific position that only persons shouldn't receive unearned reward or punishment is only really sustainable to the extent that personhood itself is earned. Because to the extent that it isn't, then persons shouldn't be treated better or worse than non-persons (as they've done nothing to earn that), in which case, WHOOPS, guess we should be equally fair to everybody! On account of how being unequally fair goes against the whole concept of fairness and thus doesn't make sense?

However, if humans and animals are moral equals, then animals are moral equals to each other. Should we lock up a crocodile for murder because it eats a gazelle?

I'm pretty sure that predation plays an important role in preventing mass starvation of prey animals. And in a case where that's true, it's hard to see how preventing predation serves the interests of any party, regardless of cognitive faculties. Similar considerations apply to the treatment of human beings as well; e.g. if a given form of foreign aid really is doing more harm than good, then stop it and find an alternative that isn't a net negative.

But some people do seem to regard "morality" as a matter of designating who it's acceptable or desirable to act against, rather that a matter of figuring out how to treat others well. Which, um, may be the strongest point yet in favor of the generalization "Humans are evil".

I think the answer to that question depends on what we accept, either subjective or objective morality.

What even is the difference between objectivity and subjectivity, though? All categories are based on how we perceive and conceptualize things to be. In practice, how "objective" or "subjective" something is seems to be a matter of how often people agree or disagree about it. In which case morality is somewhere in the middle, I guess?

If you're talking about evil in D&D terms then... yes, actually. Evil equates to selfishness, and humans are selfish.

Only kinda selfish. Also, that varies by edition. And the Monster Manual implicitly goes with "selfish is Neutral, Evil is mean" regardless of what the PHB says. Or it certainly did in 3rd Edition, at least; I haven't done any thorough overview of other MMs. Not that that's consistently adhered to either, but it describes the majority of applicable cases.

And while we continue to spread and consume, we are the only species in the history of the planet that has willfully limited its consumption. As a species, we are the only ones that understand the concepts of value in biodiversity, conservation, and living in harmony with the land that has sustained us.

In what sense does a species as a whole have will or understanding? I'd have thought that you were just talking about some members of species, but if that's not it, then what do you mean? It's not like your statements apply to all individual human beings, so are you positing some sort of global hive mind? If you're being metaphorical, then what is the metaphor for?

We're not talking about something incredibly difficult, here.

That does not seem to preclude you being preposterously difficult about it.

Logic and math are not some fancy human inventions. The are universal truth that is still true even if not a single life form exists to utilize it.

Do you think that statements exist even if no one speaks, writes, otherwise communicates, or even thinks them? Or do you think that non-existent statements can be true? Or some other third option?

The individual cares about various things like fatty foods, potential mates, survival of its community and so on not because caring about those things have, in the past, helped its ancestors pass on their genes to it, but because that individual assigns value to such things, be it due to pleasure taken from them, some system of ethics that it has formulated or whatever.

Could you explain what you mean by "because" here? The first half of this sentence seems to indicate that you're using the word in a non-standard fashion, but it's unclear what you mean specifically.

To be clear: In this case, I am not asking you to defend your word choice; I just legit do not get what you were trying to communicate.

Isn't that, basically, the spirit of debates? to support your pov? If i concede a point, due to your reasoning, it means you "won".

What purpose does that serve? If the participants in a discussion insist on only changing their minds when they're forced to, isn't that basically proceeding pretty much as inefficiently as possible? And only proceeding at all to the extent that that one can only be so obviously wrong before conceding a point, for that matter. And I have yet to see convincing evidence that such an upper limit on blatant incorrectness exists.

I mean, that's pretty much the opposite of what you should do if you want to understand things better, isn't it? Yes, not every possible change to your beliefs is an improvement, but every improvement is a change. And replacing a false belief with a true belief is more of an improvement than merely acquiring a new true belief, because in the former case you've reduced your incorrectness as well as increased your correctness.

Seriously, what are the benefits to the whole "adversarial model" or whatever? Like, are there any? If so, they are not obvious to me.

I think it's a little unfair to accost me for restating my point after you said you weren't sure what my point was.

That strikes me as, um, about as needlessly charged a characterization of BananaPhone's posting as BP's characterization of yours was. Each of you took issue with something the other said. Treating that as a personal attack seems like blowing things out of proportion. Seems like a failure on your part, even if you were just trying to come off as the reasonable one, because it seems at this one point like you're being roughly equally unreasonable. Tsk, and you were doing so well! :P

[Murska]

Do you think that statements exist even if no one speaks, writes, otherwise communicates, or even thinks them? Or do you think that non-existent statements can be true? Or some other third option?

Both of these seem true to me, in the sense that 'statements' refer to properties of the universe, and/or relations between things. If there are no minds, other things still exist and stuff could be said about them were there someone to do the saying. And, more clearly, even if no-one has yet thought of or communicated a statement, it still would refer to reality either correctly or incorrectly. As an example, any mathematical proof would have been correct before anyone thought of it. And the reality that the proof references would exist even if there were no minds to think of it.

Could you explain what you mean by "because" here? The first half of this sentence seems to indicate that you're using the word in a non-standard fashion, but it's unclear what you mean specifically.

Let me try to rephrase then. I was trying to say that people care about various things. But this is not for the reason that those things improve inclusive genetic fitness, or more likely, improved genetic fitness at some point in the past of the species. Inclusive genetic fitness is rarely if ever an important moral value to people. Instead, people care about things and assign value to them because they care about things like their own pleasure and happiness or the well-being of others. The reason they have the value system they do might be because it was shaped by the evolutionary history of their species, but that is not the same thing. My body might make me sense ice cream as tasting great because it contains sugar and fat and other such things that once were rare in my ancestral environment and important to survival. But I eat ice cream because it tastes great, not because I'm thinking of inclusive genetic fitness and increasing my odds of survival. Or I can choose not to eat ice cream because it is unhealthy to me in my current environment and I value my own health.

The individual cares about various things like fatty foods, potential mates, survival of its community and so on not because caring about those things have, in the past, helped its ancestors pass on their genes to it, but because that individual assigns value to such things, be it due to pleasure taken from them, some system of ethics that it has formulated or whatever.

[Eldariel]

I like the take FSN had on this: We're only evil if we consider ourselves so. I subscribe to Habermas's idea that morals ultimately stem from human interaction and they wouldn't exist without us: the position isn't quite as relativistic as that presented in Fate but it still fundamentally grounds morals as something we create ourselves (which is really the only valid conclusion deductive reasoning can provide us with; The Fundamentals of Ethics by Shafer-Landau offers a decent account on this, and is an accessible book for non-philosophers). However, as I believe morality exists in interaction, it's not something one can individually determine.

If we consider the consequentialist position viable, it is indeed evil to choose any path aside from the one that has the greatest net positive. However, this position doesn't necessarily condemn farming: farm animals live before they die and it could be argued that giving them life in the first place is preferable to them never being born, which would be the case if they weren't bred. This position would suggest that it's generally not evil to grow animals (including humans) for your own purposes if the alternative is that the same creature would not otherwise exist - though sufficiently poor treatment of course would make the creature's existence net negative and thus undesirable. There are certain advantages to accepting the moral nihilist view that morals simply don't exist on any kind of a binding level.


Ultimately, I think the fact that so many humans think about their own impact on the surroundings and choose to go through a great deal of trouble to avoid harming other things where they can suggests that humans probably aren't very evil (indeed, the fact that humanity has this tendency to generate a concept of morality in the first place suggests this). Humans appear to occasionally even show relatively pure cases of altruism (e.g. charity), which is very unnatural (as is much of human behavior) and very commendable. Humans on average do a fair bit of evil in their lives but as anyone playing D&D knows, taking an evil action doesn't automatically make one evil. One can be neutral or even good in spite of occasionally doing something evil as long as the other side of the scales evens things out, and humans also do a fair bit of good over their lives (and if we use reasons instead of effects in our definitions, nothing much changes: very few humans do habitually do evil things for the sake of doing evil, while good actions for the sake of doing good are at least somewhat frequent - the purpose of farming is not to harm animals, for instance).

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Go to bed, Thomas.

[TechnOkami]

Go to bed, Thomas.

Is that Eldariel's new name?

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Is that Eldariel's new name?

I hate explaining my jokes.

[Devils_Advocate]

Both of these seem true to me, in the sense that 'statements' refer to properties of the universe, and/or relations between things.

Um, well... statements may refer to properties and/or relations, and "statements" in turn refers to statements. "Statements" doesn't refer to properties and/or relations, just to things that in turn refer to those things.

The whole use/mention distinction is pretty critical here.

If there are no minds, other things still exist and stuff could be said about them were there someone to do the saying.

So what you're saying is that in a possible world with no minds, in a possible world with minds in addition to all of the other things in that world, stuff could be said about those things.

That's like saying "In China, it is raining in Paris". That statement looks equivalent to "It is raining in Paris AND Paris is in China", in which case it's false even if it's raining in Paris. The best defense of that statement possibly being true seems to be to say "No, the latter specification of location renders the former meaningless, so it means the same thing as 'It is raining in Paris' but in a needlessly confusing way". Which seems dubious at best.

I'd prefer to say that people in possible world M can't say things that are true in mindless possible world N because the things that the people in M say are in M, not in N. So they can't be true in N because they aren't in N, truly or otherwise! Statements in M may be true of N, but they aren't true in N, because, again, they aren't in N. N just ain't where those statements are located, yo.

And, more clearly, even if no-one has yet thought of or communicated a statement, it still would refer to reality either correctly or incorrectly. As an example, any mathematical proof would have been correct before anyone thought of it.

Non-existent statements would refer, be true, be false, etc. if they existed... but they don't. A thing doesn't actually have even its most definitive properties unless it actually exists. We may define Santa Claus to live at the North Pole and distribute presents around the world every year, but that doesn't mean that someone necessarily actually does that.

Let me try to rephrase then. I was trying to say that people care about various things. But this is not for the reason that those things improve inclusive genetic fitness, or more likely, improved genetic fitness at some point in the past of the species. Inclusive genetic fitness is rarely if ever an important moral value to people. Instead, people care about things and assign value to them because they care about things like their own pleasure and happiness or the well-being of others. The reason they have the value system they do might be because it was shaped by the evolutionary history of their species, but that is not the same thing. My body might make me sense ice cream as tasting great because it contains sugar and fat and other such things that once were rare in my ancestral environment and important to survival. But I eat ice cream because it tastes great, not because I'm thinking of inclusive genetic fitness and increasing my odds of survival. Or I can choose not to eat ice cream because it is unhealthy to me in my current environment and I value my own health.

The individual cares about various things like fatty foods, potential mates, survival of its community and so on not because caring about those things have, in the past, helped its ancestors pass on their genes to it, but because that individual assigns value to such things, be it due to pleasure taken from them, some system of ethics that it has formulated or whatever.

Causality is transitive, though. If A caused B and B caused C, then A caused C. If your ancestral environment resulted in you valuing certain things (e.g. pleasure) as ends in themselves, and those values in turn resulted in you valuing other things (e.g. ice cream) as means to those ends, then your ancestral environment resulted in you valuing the intermediate goals that you do as ways of achieving the end goals that you have. What you're doing is like saying "You don't eat ice cream because you like it, you eat ice cream because of the nerve signals that your arms and mouth received from your brain". The point is that there's a chain of cause and effect between X and Y, not that X was the most recent of an interminable series of transitive states leading to Y. The immense internal complexity of that series of states just gets abstracted away; we hardly even could fathom all of the details!

The funny thing is, there's a tendency to talk about evolutionary psychology as though we desire to increase the frequency of the genes that result in our behaviors. Such talk of e.g. "reproductive strategies" is generally a metaphorical shorthand, but is potentially misleading to those unfamiliar with the convention, and I suspect it may result in sloppy thinking if one isn't careful. People talk about "wanting" the results that make behaviors more common, when what they really mean is that those results do make behaviors more common.

But it seems that here, you've stated the contrapositive: Claimed that things that we don't desire aren't responsible for our behavior! And I think that you may have even been attempting to critique the sort of language described in the preceding paragraph in doing so? But you then did exactly the same thing in reverse, either because didn't realize the nature of the mistake you were criticizing (if you thought that such language is intended literally), or... despite wanting to criticize the same conflation of of cause and intent that you engaged in yourself?

Because if so... man. If irony were blueberries, we'd be drinkin' a whole lotta smoothies, amirite?

If we consider the consequentialist position viable, it is indeed evil to choose any path aside from the one that has the greatest net positive.

Eh, utilitarianism doesn't really distinguish between "good" and "evil" of a particular sort so much as between "better" and "worse" of a particular sort, if you get what I'm saying. I think that they're best seen as separate but related concepts, because a preference ordering on possible states of the universe doesn't directly translate into an algorithm for making decisions, and there are tricky questions about how best to estimate the expected utility of various algorithms.

However, this position doesn't necessarily condemn farming: farm animals live before they die and it could be argued that giving them life in the first place is preferable to them never being born, which would be the case if they weren't bred. This position would suggest that it's generally not evil to grow animals (including humans) for your own purposes if the alternative is that the same creature would not otherwise exist - though sufficiently poor treatment of course would make the creature's existence net negative and thus undesirable.

Well, first off, I think that it's important not to assume that anything has a life worth living, but only to conclude so based on an examination of the evidence; starting from a position that net negative lives are the exception seems dreadfully irresponsible.

Beyond that, though, you seem to be making the all-to-common implicit assumption that the alternative to a given course of action is nothing at all, which is of course preposterous. It's not as though the biomatter that makes up farm animals would just be taken out of the ecosystem without them. Look not only to that which is seen, but to that which is unseen!

Humans appear to occasionally even show relatively pure cases of altruism (e.g. charity), which is very unnatural (as is much of human behavior) and very commendable.

I'm going to have to ask you what you mean by "unnatural" in this... Actually, no, you know what? Instead, I'd like to ask everyone what "unnatural" means in any context, because I seriously don't understand the concept. I get "artificial", and I kind of get "supernatural", although the concept may break down under scrutiny, but "unnatural"? It's like, man, what even is that? It seems to indicate a sort of disapproval somehow at once more vague and more specific than "immoral", but beyond that I'm lost.

But I will say that your usage of the term here has me extra perplexed, because its negative connotation seems to be an integral component of the concept. So I, like, super double plus don't understand this time. In conclusion, then, what the hell are you even talking about? Like, I don't mean that in an accusatory way, but seriously as an honest question. What distinction are you making here?

[Murska]

Um, well... statements may refer to properties and/or relations, and "statements" in turn refers to statements. "Statements" doesn't refer to properties and/or relations, just to things that in turn refer to those things.

True enough, if needlessly confusing. The point is, the things that statements refer to exist without minds to make statements about them.

So what you're saying is that in a possible world with no minds, in a possible world with minds in addition to all of the other things in that world, stuff could be said about those things.

That's like saying "In China, it is raining in Paris". That statement looks equivalent to "It is raining in Paris AND Paris is in China", in which case it's false even if it's raining in Paris. The best defense of that statement possibly being true seems to be to say "No, the latter specification of location renders the former meaningless, so it means the same thing as 'It is raining in Paris' but in a needlessly confusing way". Which seems dubious at best.

I'd prefer to say that people in possible world M can't say things that are true in mindless possible world N because the things that the people in M say are in M, not in N. So they can't be true in N because they aren't in N, truly or otherwise! Statements in M may be true of N, but they aren't true in N, because, again, they aren't in N. N just ain't where those statements are located, yo.

Non-existent statements would refer, be true, be false, etc. if they existed... but they don't. A thing doesn't actually have even its most definitive properties unless it actually exists. We may define Santa Claus to live at the North Pole and distribute presents around the world every year, but that doesn't mean that someone necessarily actually does that.

No, what I meant was that even in a world without minds, the other stuff would still exist. Nobody would be making statements, but the things statements might refer to would be there.

Another interesting, though unimportant, point is that I can think of a world without minds, in my mind in this world with minds, and then make statements about it.

Causality is transitive, though. If A caused B and B caused C, then A caused C. If your ancestral environment resulted in you valuing certain things (e.g. pleasure) as ends in themselves, and those values in turn resulted in you valuing other things (e.g. ice cream) as means to those ends, then your ancestral environment resulted in you valuing the intermediate goals that you do as ways of achieving the end goals that you have. What you're doing is like saying "You don't eat ice cream because you like it, you eat ice cream because of the nerve signals that your arms and mouth received from your brain". The point is that there's a chain of cause and effect between X and Y, not that X was the most recent of an interminable series of transitive states leading to Y. The immense internal complexity of that series of states just gets abstracted away; we hardly even could fathom all of the details!

The funny thing is, there's a tendency to talk about evolutionary psychology as though we desire to increase the frequency of the genes that result in our behaviors. Such talk of e.g. "reproductive strategies" is generally a metaphorical shorthand, but is potentially misleading to those unfamiliar with the convention, and I suspect it may result in sloppy thinking if one isn't careful. People talk about "wanting" the results that make behaviors more common, when what they really mean is that those results do make behaviors more common.

But it seems that here, you've stated the contrapositive: Claimed that things that we don't desire aren't responsible for our behavior! And I think that you may have even been attempting to critique the sort of language described in the preceding paragraph in doing so? But you then did exactly the same thing in reverse, either because didn't realize the nature of the mistake you were criticizing (if you thought that such language is intended literally), or... despite wanting to criticize the same conflation of of cause and intent that you engaged in yourself?

Because if so... man. If irony were blueberries, we'd be drinkin' a whole lotta smoothies, amirite?

True enough. The point, again, was that I am not consciously making all my decisions based on what increases my inclusive genetic fitness, nor do all my decisions actually increase my inclusive genetic fitness, even if most of my actions result from a long chain of cause and effect that includes my ancestral environment having my ancestors survive and reproduce. Technically a cause for everything I do is that the big bang happened.

[Eldariel]

Eh, utilitarianism doesn't really distinguish between "good" and "evil" of a particular sort so much as between "better" and "worse" of a particular sort, if you get what I'm saying. I think that they're best seen as separate but related concepts, because a preference ordering on possible states of the universe doesn't directly translate into an algorithm for making decisions, and there are tricky questions about how best to estimate the expected utility of various algorithms.

Okay, if we narrow it down to only utilitarianism specifically, we're judging actions by which of them provides the greatest benefit (defining which is the tricky part) and least loss. Whether we use "good" and "evil" or "better" and "worse" is a meaningless distinction. Far as actions are considered, they have a set of results and by whatever our criteria are, they can be graded to which is the morally most sublime and most horrendous; that is, which has the highest net positive and the highest net negative. As this is the whole group of answers, we have better and worse actions but we can equally call whichever action has net positive results a "good" action and whichever action has net negative results an "evil" action.

This position is completely in line with the utilitarian logic and the only real way these terms can even possibly relate to the concept of actions in this framework and thus the only natural semantic definition. Of course, systems can have the "utmost benefit" which we could define as "good" and the "utmost loss" as evil but for individual actions, it seems inevitable no position will be purely "good" or "evil" by most rational definitions we could give to "benefit" and thus it only makes sense to use these terms for the eventualities that exist within the framework.

Well, first off, I think that it's important not to assume that anything has a life worth living, but only to conclude so based on an examination of the evidence; starting from a position that net negative lives are the exception seems dreadfully irresponsible.

Beyond that, though, you seem to be making the all-to-common implicit assumption that the alternative to a given course of action is nothing at all, which is of course preposterous. It's not as though the biomatter that makes up farm animals would just be taken out of the ecosystem without them. Look not only to that which is seen, but to that which is unseen!

Depends on your definition of benefit and value. Traditional act utilitarianism (which I think you're referring to here based on your above statements, please correct me if you're talking about a different brand) only extends to living agents for instance so what becomes of the biomatter itself is irrelevant beyond enabling feeding the existing agents (but then again, this does nothing to describe the value of a life). The evidence can't determine our values or morals, which is the whole problem in this brand of philosophy and why these discussions even exist. You can consider any number of sets of evidence but you're still left with the burden of deciding what ultimately is the benefit we should or should not strive for even if one narrow down one's moral logic by first subscribing to consequentialism, then utilitarianism and then act utilitarianism.

I'm going to have to ask you what you mean by "unnatural" in this... Actually, no, you know what? Instead, I'd like to ask everyone what "unnatural" means in any context, because I seriously don't understand the concept. I get "artificial", and I kind of get "supernatural", although the concept may break down under scrutiny, but "unnatural"? It's like, man, what even is that? It seems to indicate a sort of disapproval somehow at once more vague and more specific than "immoral", but beyond that I'm lost.

But I will say that your usage of the term here has me extra perplexed, because its negative connotation seems to be an integral component of the concept. So I, like, super double plus don't understand this time. In conclusion, then, what the hell are you even talking about? Like, I don't mean that in an accusatory way, but seriously as an honest question. What distinction are you making here?

Fair enough, there are of course a few possible definitions. In this context I thought the referent rather obvious though: I used the term in the evolutionary sense. A natural action is a self-serving one, or more precisely one serving the passing of individual's genes onward, the grand logic behind natural selection in evolution. Unnatural action is thus anything that does not serve that purpose. Though it's probably more fruitful to think about this from the individual's perspective rather than the omniscient perspective as that gives us a more realistic picture of how an individual ought to act in any given scenario.

[Evandar]

Most ethical systems are totally subjective in what you decide to value. I'm a virtue ethicist. It isn't 'right' to be one.

By utilitarian standards, almost everyone is horrendously evil. (Myself included.) Turns out buying an expensive car at the cost of ten lives in a war-torn country you could have saved with food or medical aid is pretty selfish no matter how you spin it. I think this is a problem for almost all ethical systems I've come across -- as in, not a flaw in the ethical systems, but a consequence of adhering to most ethical systems.

And I was utterly convinced by the arguments for being vegetarian presented in Peter Singer's Practical Ethics. He writes very concisely and makes fair assumptions for most of his points. Unfortunately I'm still not a vegetarian. (So even if the majority of people are not evil by virtue of ignorance regarding some arguments, I am because I'm perfectly aware of them and still choose to act selfishly.)

Basically it's all very complicated and there's no obvious answer, but the fact there's such a huge amount of suffering we could alleviate by feeding the starving (or as some people have said, only eating very specific animals raised in particular circumstances) instead of buying luxury goods, it's unlikely our net karma in most systems turns out to be positive.

Edit: And I believe Eldariel is right regarding having to make moral assumptions in all variations of utilitarianism (at the very least). At the risk of looking silly, it's a simple case of the ought-is problem. And yeah, we're only evil if we consider ourselves to be evil. I just feel that most of the positions it is possible to take result in something approximating that label.

And extra last-minute edit, I should just clarify I'm not actually condemning everyone for doing these things. I think these systems result in an 'evil' rating, but real life and human psychology are complicated, and I don't actual view non-vegetarians and people that buy luxury goods evil in any personal way.

[Killer Angel]

True enough, if needlessly confusing. The point is, the things that statements refer to exist without minds to make statements about them.

I'm not so sure about Schrodinger's cat.

[Murska]

I'm not so sure about Schrodinger's cat.

Well, the question regarding the necessity of the collapse postulate is currently an open one, though I hold that until there exists a reason for it we should not assume it.

[Killer Angel]

Well, the question regarding the necessity of the collapse postulate is currently an open one, though I hold that until there exists a reason for it we should not assume it.

Fair enough, I suppose.

[Devils_Advocate]

I am not consciously making all my decisions based on what increases my inclusive genetic fitness, nor do all my decisions actually increase my inclusive genetic fitness, even if most of my actions result from a long chain of cause and effect that includes my ancestral environment having my ancestors survive and reproduce.

Well, of course.

Technically a cause for everything I do is that the big bang happened.

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

Fair enough, there are of course a few possible definitions. In this context I thought the referent rather obvious though: I used the term in the evolutionary sense. A natural action is a self-serving one, or more precisely one serving the passing of individual's genes onward, the grand logic behind natural selection in evolution. Unnatural action is thus anything that does not serve that purpose. Though it's probably more fruitful to think about this from the individual's perspective rather than the omniscient perspective as that gives us a more realistic picture of how an individual ought to act in any given scenario.

I'm not sure you understand how evolution works. Individual organisms are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers. Various humans have various goals that caused their ancestors to have more descendants than humans without those goals. The desire to have sexual intercourse and the desire to raise children both tend to result in greater reproduction, but humans haven't been carefully optimized to specifically breed and then raise the resulting offspring, so people use contraceptives and people adopt children. Unsurprisingly, there are also people who specifically want numerous descendants, because that's selected for as well. But motives and behaviors can be products of evolution regardless of whether they pass on an individual's genes, or are expected to.

Heck, traits that reduce fitness can appear via mutation and linger through many generations. That doesn't "go against evolution", much in the same way that flight doesn't "violate gravity". Nature, in the broadest sense, is just the universe as it really is. In that sense, natural laws are inviolable by definition.

Humans have loads of laughably non-optimal traits because we are evolved organisms, which is to say that we aren't elegantly designed because we're not even designed at all. But given that our genotype is mostly an immense pile of kludges, it's damned impressive. Which, thinking about it, suggests that Dungeons & Dragons should have a pretty great ruleset by the seven thousandth edition or so. HEYO!

[Eldariel]

I'm not sure you understand how evolution works. Individual organisms are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers. Various humans have various goals that caused their ancestors to have more descendants than humans without those goals. The desire to have sexual intercourse and the desire to raise children both tend to result in greater reproduction, but humans haven't been carefully optimized to specifically breed and then raise the resulting offspring, so people use contraceptives and people adopt children. Unsurprisingly, there are also people who specifically want numerous descendants, because that's selected for as well. But motives and behaviors can be products of evolution regardless of whether they pass on an individual's genes, or are expected to.

Heck, traits that reduce fitness can appear via mutation and linger through many generations. That doesn't "go against evolution", much in the same way that flight doesn't "violate gravity". Nature, in the broadest sense, is just the universe as it really is. In that sense, natural laws are inviolable by definition.

Humans have loads of laughably non-optimal traits because we are evolved organisms, which is to say that we aren't elegantly designed because we're not even designed at all. But given that our genotype is mostly an immense pile of kludges, it's damned impressive. Which, thinking about it, suggests that Dungeons & Dragons should have a pretty great ruleset by the seven thousandth edition or so. HEYO!

While your lack of certainty is of course rather unfortunate, it is ultimately rather irrelevant. It is also vindicated since the skeptic argument of anything we perceive potentially not existing cannot be refuted in a deductively valid manner, so you are indeed well-advised to not be certain of anything. That said, your argument...well, first, could you define what you mean by "go against evolution"? That's not a term anybody else has used in this thread - if that's a position you believe I've held, we're most likely talking past each other.

[OldTrees1]

we're most likely talking past each other.

Yes, you two have been talking past each other. I noticed it starting when you said this:

Humans appear to occasionally even show relatively pure cases of altruism (e.g. charity), which is very unnatural (as is much of human behavior) and very commendable.

After some clarification of what you meant by unnatural(using "natural" in an evolutionary sense) Devils_Advocate did a bad job of explaining how altruism can be natural(in the evolutionary sense) or at least a compatible with the natural(again in the evolutionary sense) behavior.

To give the cliff notes on evolved altruism in animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-c...w_of_evolution
Scientists initially did not understand why Prairie Dogs sometimes behave altruistically. Turns out that since genes persist if they are reproduced, if an individual gene holder does something that decreases their fitness but increases the gene's fitness, the gene is being selected for despite the individual being selected against. This was an important discovery in the study of evolution.

Although to Devils_Advocate's credit they did explain how the emergence and persistence of mutations that are detrimental to their own(the mutation's) fitness is still consistent with evolution(and even expected occasionally in the long span of history).

[Devils_Advocate]

But I wasn't talking about how altruistic behavior can increase the frequency of the alleles that cause said altruistic behavior. I was talking about how evolved behaviors sometimes -- often, even -- do not contribute to the frequencies of the alleles that cause them! Generally, a type of evolved behavior will result in a net increase of its associated genetic/memetic/etc. material, thereby propagating itself, but that doesn't mean that most instances of that type of behavior will serve that end. It may even be that in most cases, the reproductive costs of a type of behavior slightly outweigh the reproductive benefits.

Like, for example. Let us imagine that Ted and Dan are two hunter-gatherers. Suppose that Ted has an aversion to weird unfamiliar food, whereas Dan will scarf down pretty much anything. And further supposed that nine times out of ten, the strange plants and animals that Ted and Dan encounter are delicious and nutritious, BUT... every tenth one is poisonous. It's not hard to see that, under those circumstances, Dan is going to be eliminated from the gene pool faster. Survival of the fittest, sucka!

Now, it may be that generations later, Ted's tribe knows enough about the local flora and fauna that his descendants' picky eating starts to become disadvantageous. From then on, one can expect such dietary habit to become less common. But if they're not especially detrimental, they'll likely stick around for a fair while; certainly longer than a highly disadvantageous trait would, I would expect. And that's why types of evolved behaviors only generally serve to propagate themselves; sometimes, the environment that they were advantageous in no longer exists, but there isn't a strong enough selection pressure against them for them to have been eliminated yet.

None of this requires anyone involved to be actively trying to maximize their reproductive fitness. Y'know, frankly, if anything, I should think that trying to maximize your reproductive fitness at the cost of all else is an unnatural way to behave. Evolved organisms don't do that. I mean, do you know anyone who cares more about the frequencies of their alleles in the population than anything else? That's more what I'd expect from some sort of scary bioengineered superorganism or somethin'.

Anyway, I did pretty much ignore kin selection in my explanation, which was an oversimplification. Traits resulting in more decedents don't necessarily become more common than traits resulting in less decedents, because there are multiple factors at work.

While your lack of certainty is of course rather unfortunate, it is ultimately rather irrelevant. It is also vindicated since the skeptic argument of anything we perceive potentially not existing cannot be refuted in a deductively valid manner, so you are indeed well-advised to not be certain of anything.

O...kay. I wasn't engaging in radical skepticism there, though. Like, I wasn't positing a "We could all be brains in jars" sort of scenario. I was more concerned about an "Eldariel thinks natural selection requires our cooperation to function" scenario.

That said, your argument...well, first, could you define what you mean by "go against evolution"? That's not a term anybody else has used in this thread - if that's a position you believe I've held, we're most likely talking past each other.

Well, uh, I don't think that the phrase "go against evolution" actually successfully refers to anything. It doesn't really make sense. But it fails to make sense to me in exactly the same way in which "unnatural in the evolutionary sense" fails to make to me. It was intended as a simple rephrasing. They seemed like exactly the same flavor of nonsense to me, but possibly my nonsense palate is insufficiently refined.

But the use of the term "unnatural" implies a dichotomy. That dichotomy has "natural" things that are in accord with "nature", part of "nature", or whatever, on one side; and it has "unnatural" things that are contrary to to "nature", outside of "nature", or however you want to put it, on the other side. The ambiguity lies mostly in what "nature" means, it seems to me. You said that you "used the term in the evolutionary sense", and I'm unaware of any special technical definition of "unnatural" in evolutionary biology (If there is one that I'm unaware of, please let me know!), so you seemed to be saying that evolution was the relevant part of "nature", whatever "nature" might be in a broader sense. So you seemed to be indicating that you believe that taking actions that do not pass on one's genes goes against evolution or is contrary to evolution or can't be part of evolution or however the heck you want to put it.

Like, replace the relevant sentence with "That isn't 'unnatural in an evolutionary sense', much in the same way that flight isn't 'unnatural in a gravitational sense'" if you like. Doesn't change my point.

[gooddragon1]

We do not all choose to eat more than we need. While it is possible to get the nutrients necessary to survive from non-animal sources it is much less efficient. Most importantly, we do not all choose to eat animals out of malice. We do not all have hatred for them. We do not all have an urge to inflict pain upon them and torture them physically and mentally. An alligator eats an animal not out of cruelty but hunger. It doesn't know about alternative sources of nutrition. We do. However, for the same reason that animals are usually neutral in D&D (not killing and eating out of malice), the act of eating animals to stay alive is not necessarily an act of malice or a way to state that we are evil. Some people engage in animal cruelty and perhaps torment animals or kill them out of malice, but that is usually not the consideration in killing them.