So you’re saying all the species dying before the Industrial Revolution is humanities fault? Which is typically a one species per million per year? And not including the tons of species in the dinosaur era.
We all do our share, and it will take all of us to reverse what we have been doing.
You are taking it into stupidity. Stop it.
I guess logic is stupidity now. It’s a fact that one species of a million died a year, before humans.
People that think that humans are evil but continue to exist:
sad.
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For instance, consider this:
In this era where Environmental Apocalyptist Pietism is so hip, let’s say some 30% of the world population and 70% of the high density consumption first world population, imagine how drastic would be the effect on the planet and other species according to their own prophecies if they all happened to not be alive tomorrow? They would be basically saving the planet.
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Self righteousness perhaps. They view humans as evil and think “Oh I’m going to prevent that with my superiority complex on morality”.
I view humans as inherently neutral.
A better question is whether, given that the context isn’t right for having kids, is there a moral impetus to fix the context in that direction? For example, if I can’t afford kids, does being able to afford kids weigh in favor of getting a higher-paying job or cutting expenses?
Again it’s likely to be complex, with many competing goods to consider. But your self/other framework, shouldn’t creating a new other be one of the many competing goods?
As I said, functional morality is a meta-ethics, and a successful meta-ethics should be able to replace moral language with some other amoral language (contra G.E. Moore).
Moral language can still be useful shorthand. Or, because morality is partly group consensus, moral language can be a way of influencing the group towards a different consensus.
But you’re right that, given functional morality, we could avoid moral language completely.
I’m not saying it’s an evolutionary illusion, I’m saying it’s an evolved trait. The ‘good’, the instinctive positive moral sentiment, exists because it helped our ancestors survive. In particular, it helped them survive by helping them form stable groups that could better cooperate to the benefit of their members.
This is a category error.
There’s a real distinction between a slow trickle of extinctions from pre-human times, and the mass extinctions that humans have created. I think @Greatest_I_am is correct in that. The ecosystem is destabilized by mass extinctions in a way that it isn’t by a slow trickle of extinctions. And humans should care about the ecosystem if only for the purely selfish reason that we need it to survive.
But also, humans did drive a lot of species to extinction prior to the Industrial Revolution. Again, look at the mass extinction of megafauna in the Americas and Australia. Both coincide with the best evidence we have for the arrival of prehistoric humans. We were effectively invasive species, and we significantly disrupted local ecosystems with only spears and clubs (and, later and closer to home, farming).
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Fine, but then you still have to say what “the good” then actually really is (rather than the context in which it was formed), or postulate that it is an illusion, that is, an impression that doesn’t refer to anything that isn’t already fully coherent outside of any mention of the impression.
Either “good” is an illusion that exists to further species survival, species survival is itself what is good, or both are irrelevant to what actually is good.
I think whatever is good must necessarily be human. So while this does not mean that humanity itself is what is good, much less that any particular human is good, it does definitely mean that anybody positing an extrahuman good is contradicting themselves by being humans and positing it.
I am also not saying nothing exists outside of the human, bless my soul. I am saying that good or bad doesn’t apply to it. Maybe reverence and awe, maybe other things. And maybe reverence and awe, being human, are good.
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Glad to know that me personally have killed 1 or more actual species in my life. Amazing really.
Not the multibillion-dollar corporations that pullute 100,000,000x more than me in any given period of time, or that knowingly dump toxins into the environment. Oh no. Not those who cut corners to pollute and allow knowingly harmful chemicals into their commercial and industrial products, but pay politicians millions of dollars each year to cover it up and do nothing. Oh yes, it’s definitely not them. Not those same politicians who own three mansions and a personal private jet and a yacht, and who knowingly outsource labor for their corporations to third-world nations knowing those nations don’t have any actual pollution standards nor even human rights standards at all.
Yep. It’s me. You got me.
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Actual CNN-brainfucked libtards be like.
“I personally”
Your grammar in and of itself is murder. Js.
What function trumps all other functions?
This one:
Treat the other as self.
I don’t think that’s right. Like if I tell you that ‘food’ is the building blocks of our bodies and the energy to run them, you’re not like, “but then you still have to say what “the food” then actually really is”. I just told you what it is.
“The Good” has this weird presumption where it somehow resists explanation, it’s irreducible such that even after it’s been explained it still demands explanation. Given my moral framework, that shouldn’t be surprising: we’ve evolved to have an innate tendency to form a concept of the good and to treat it as sacred, because that helped our ancestors cooperate and coordinate and survive.
But we’ve explained what the good then actually really is. You can call it an “illusion” is you like, but I don’t think that’s quite right. You are very likely to have internalized the good as your culture defines it, and to the extent you have, ‘the good’ as you experience it is actually pointing to a real phenomenon, namely that collection of cultural norms and assumptions that make functioning in that culture possible. You aren’t deceived in thinking that it’s important that you follow those cultural norms and assumptions in a quasi-religious way: the tendency to think that way evolved because it works.
In this case survival, but I mean that descriptively first and foremost: we have morality because it helped our ancestors survive. And we can best understand morality through that lens.
According to what you said, the title should not be “reproduction is morally good,” but “believing that reproduction is morally good leads to enhanced survivavility of the species.”
Which I don’t see how that would be philosophically interesting but ok.
Defining ‘good’ is necessary.
If we define as ‘good’ what is ordered, contrasted with ‘evil’ or ‘bad’ as that which is chaotic, defined as lacking order not as complexity, concealing order, then what is ‘good’ is whatever promotes and prolongs ordering.
Life is ordering guided by knowledge - intentional.
Therefore, whatever prolongs and promotes intentional ordering is ‘good’ from the perspective of organism dependent on order.
Given the limitations of life, propagation is ‘good’ in that it affirms life through a necessary sacrifice.
The sacrifice sanctifies life.
From an entirely objective perspective life is neither good nor bad…
All value judgements are triangulation:
Subjective Self <> effort/distance<>Objective.
Life’s primary objective is self-maintenance. Whatever preserves life is evaluated by life as valuable, or good, to whatever degree, determined by an individual’s objectives and his judgements.
Some humans have adopted ideals that make survival secondary, adjusting what they consider good and valuable and what bad and of little value.
This is a meaningless thing to say. It can be said about anything insofar as if it is not maintained, it can no longer exist so as to posit any other objective.
What is the purpose of a cloud? Self-maintenance. Etc.
This is the problem when people start ascribing teleology to Darwin.
That it must be maintained in order to posit any objectives, says nothing about what life’s objectives may be.
A cloud has a purpose?
Okay…
Magical thinking is for you.
Did you miss what I said about what life’s primary objective is and how humans choose different objectives based on their adopted ideology?
Never mind then.
I didn’t miss it. You said life’s main purpose was self maintenance. This can be said about a cloud, a pencil, anything, just as accurately. The proof, like Darwin’s proof, is that they continue to exist.
No, I agree, a horrid way to attempt philosophy.