TheAncientGeek comments on Natural selection defeats the orthogonality thesis - Less Wrong

-13 Post author: aberglas 29 September 2014 08:52AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (71)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 30 September 2014 02:36:03PM *  1 point [-]

Moral values certainly exist.

But you also said:

That moral values are self-evident truths, facts of nature.  However, Darwin and Wallace taught us that this is just an illusion.  

What does that add up to? That moral values are arbitrary products of evolution, THEREFORE they are not objective or universal?

That is Descriptive Evolutionary Ethics

Indeed. The claim that moral instincts are products of evolution is a descriptive claim. It leaves the question open as to whether inherited instincts are what is actually morally right. That is a normative issue. It is not a corollary of descriptive evolutionary ethics. In general, you cannot jump from the descriptive to the normative. And I don't think Darwin did that. I think the positive descriptive claim and the negative normative claim seem like corollaries to you because assume morality can only be one thing,

The counter argument is that if moral values did not arise from natural selection, then where did they arise from?

Firstly it's not either/or.

Secondly there is an abundance, not a shortage, of ways of justifying normative ethics.

Comment author: aberglas 30 September 2014 11:59:03PM 0 points [-]

Yes, moral values are not objective or universal.

Note that this is not normative but descriptive. It is not saying what ought, but what is. I am not trying to justify normative ethics, just to provide an explanation of where our moral values come from.

(Thanks for the comments, this all adds value.)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 01 October 2014 08:48:40AM 0 points [-]

Yes, moral values are not objective or universal.

Not proven. Yout can't prove that by noting that instinctual system 1, values aren't objective, because that says nothing about what system 2 can come up with.