Thank you, Dan, for a fine contribution dedicated to the improvement of our understanding of ethics !!
In what follows, I would like to clarify a few things about the difference between morals and morality. I discussed the latter in the earlier post, the one just preceding this one. Now I would like to ask all readers if the following is helpful?
Groups have moral standards that advocate that people - sometimes at a cost to themselves - act altruistically to benefit other people? Furthermore, groups make the effort to punish, at least by disapproval, people who violate those moral standards? Research has determined that groups have moral standards that advocate altruism because doing so maintains and increases those benefits of cooperation.
An obvious answer to the question is this: Individuals benefit other people simply because they love them. Most families don’t stop to evaluate whether any members of the family are a net asset or not, and then vote them out if they are not. Intrinsic valuation (love) can account for it.
Furthermore, groups enforce moral standards that advocate altruism because, as studies by M. Markus have shown, that enforcement is, almost always, required to maintain those benefits of cooperation. Those are facts of today’s world. This is data about people as they conduct themselves ethically in everyday daily life.
It is important to differentiate all this from the brain incapacity known clinically as Psychopathy. About two percent of the global population are psychopaths. [Does this perhaps include nihilists of all kinds. Maybe even “Moral Nihilists"?]
• The neuroscientist and psychologist Abigail Marsh recently explained what makes a psychopath.
• Marsh said that while psychopathy is a spectrum, all people with it have four defining traits.
• They are pitilessness, remorselessness, an inability to love, and insensitivity to the possibility of harm.
As we all have noticed, moral standards and moral practices (mores) vary widely from culture to culture. Some require women to be submissive and some do not. Some practice slavery and others would not.
Different societies have made various and diverse choices about who will be in a favored in-group (perhaps just men, large land-owners, multi-billionaires, or slave owners) and who will be in out-groups.
And yet it is a fact that variations of the Golden Rule are found in virtually every culture because, as an evolutionist would argue, they are remarkably effective means of defining behaviors that are likely to increase the benefits of cooperation in groups. For example, game theory has provided further data by showing [in its “Tit-for-tat strategy] that “Treat other as you and they would want to be treated, so as to avoid suffering and increase value.” There is additional research data which reveals that punishment by social disapproval of violators is one of the most effective strategies known for maintaining or increasing the benefits of cooperation in groups. {If anyone is interested, in my next post will discuss what makes for a “good theory of ethics.”}
So let us hear from you. Do you have any ideas or concepts to contribute either in the area of ethics, or in systematic ethical theory?