No worries! I appreciate that you ask questions. First I will make some clarifications about the four points in your previous comment.
The proposition: "People and/or other animals actually act so as to maximize genetic fitness" is, as you stated, not true. There is no disagreement about this.
We do not "get from there to" ethical fitnessism. In fact, we do not violate Hume's law at all, i.e., we do not deduce any normative ethical statement from a set of only factual statements.
The statement that: "'Acting so as to maximize genetic fitness' is a principle that approximates actual people's and cultures' ethical systems, but unlike them has some kind of scientific underpinning" is also neither true nor claimed by ethical fitnessism.
The norm that: "We should act so as to maximize genetic fitness" is not really a fitnessist norm, since fitnessism prescribes actions for individuals (and not so much for "us") and always specifies who's fitness and what kind of fitness we are talking about, namely the behavioural fitness of the individual in question. Instead, please see my original response to DeVliegendeHollander’s comment on the definition of ethical fitnessism and the rightness criterion based on Dawkins’s central theorem of the extended phenotype. The question about the word ‘should’ was addressed in my previous comment to you.
I hope this made everything clearer.
Since I am a fitnessist you should conclude that I:
approve of actions that increase my behavioural fitness, and disapprove of ones that do not;
* care nothing about other ethical principles, unless they match up with this.
tend to act in ways that increase my behavioural fitness, even if doing so makes my own life markedly less pleasant.
tend to try to get other people to increase my own behavioural fitness.
Now to the examples:
Ethical fitnessism is actually not about having as many children as possible; rather it is about the long term survival of one's behavioural genes. The long term survival of an individual’s behavioural genes can be achieved in many ways, especially considering that an individual shares behavioural genes with many other individuals. For instance, all humans are closely related to all (and socially dependant on many) other humans, making humans exceptionally important to each other, but even other species are important due to our common heritage and shared behavioural genes. So in your example you should also consider the harm and possible injury caused to the woman and the increased risk to your female relatives, friends and children, especially. Socially and reproductively successful humans, both men and women, share a common interest in curbing violence and upholding the rule of law. Moreover fitnessism does not tell us to simply follow the instincts which have evolved due to natural selection. Since we humans have radically changed our environment with the emergence of modern society and technology, and since we have such a decisive impact on the future of life on Earth, we have to think much further ahead and afar than other animals. To exploit other individuals for selfish short-term gains at the expense of what we hold dear and valuable in the long term, is morally wrong. Rather than maximizing the number of her own offspring, a fitnessist acts so as to increase the probability of the long-term existence of the body of organic life which we are all part of and related to.
It simply is not "the only way" for you to pass on your genes, since you are not an alien. As explained in the previous example you can support the survival of your behavioural genes in other related individuals.
Of course you should care! You are related to every other human on the planet. But if you instead truly are an alien and therefore are genetically unrelated to life on Earth, you should still try to survive for as long as possible, because that is the behaviour which is favoured by natural selection, since your genes are inside your own body.
Ethical fitnessism states that an individual should maximize the behavioural fitness of this individual, not short term but in endless time (if this is the behaviour which tends to be maximized as a consequence of natural selection). If my behavioural fitness is in conflict with yours or not is a matter of to which extent we share behavioural genes. Humans share genes to a great extent with each other, so I believe that humans’ indexical Darwinian self-interests coincide more than they are in conflict. This leads to a decision method which is not treated in the original link, namely fitnessist contractarianism, which is universalizable. Fitnessist contractarianism is explained in “Ethical Fitnessism. The Ethic of the Fittest Behaviour”, which is in Swedish, I am afraid. A short explanation is that it is a method for human social and political decision making when humans are acting in accordance with their own Darwinian self-interest. To find common ground for social and political decision making for closely related individuals, such as humans, is clearly possible. For example, avoiding nuclear war seems to benefit each individual’s behavioural fitness, just as the common prosperity of humans seems to do.
As for ethical fitnessism being a moral theory, I think your argument is based on meta-ethics, wherefore I recommend that you read the original blog post that I linked to, giving extra attention to part 2: “The Non-universalizable Ethic of the Predator and the Quarry”. Rightness criteria are indexical, but decision methods are universalizable.
Of course this is related to the scientific question if “objective” moral values exist or not. I believe that no such values exist, since no such values have ever been observed, nor are necessary to explain anything in the natural world. Using Occam’s razor, I deny their existence. Instead I believe that “subjective” moral values exist, since I believe that such values are observed every day, when for example studying the behaviour of humans or other living organisms.
Regarding your last question, ethical fitnessism states that an individual should maximize his or her own behavioural fitness. Ethical fitnessism prescribes how an individual should act, wherefore it is a normative ethical statement. But the statement:
People (and other animals) have a tendency to act in ways that in evolutionary history have resulted in more copies of the genes they carry.
is a factual statement.
If you hold a position that affects only your own actions and your opinions of them, I don't see much reason for calling it an ethical system. I read the blog post; that second section defends acting on non-universalizable principles, but doesn't so far as I can see defend thinking of them as moral principles and that's what I'm casting doubt on.
For clarity: I am also a moral nonrealist, and my doubts about the moral-theory-ness of fitnessism aren't because it doesn't involve a claim that its values are Objectively Right And Good. Rather: I think a moral t...
I noticed that there has been some earlier discussion about Sam Harris’s Moral Landscape Challenge here at LW. As a writer on the Swedish politico-philosophical blog The Inverted Fable of Reality, I would like to share a response to the challenge, written by our main contributor, which I believe is interesting to read even if you are not familiar with The Moral Landscape or its content. See this link for the response and a short explanation of the challenge.
The response takes a different approach to most responses to the challenge. It is divided into four parts and starts by asking which ethic is most compatible with science and reality and finally tries to answer this question.