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...
"Morality" centrally refers to a set of beliefs and practices only attested in humans, ...
Morality does also apply to non-human organisms, for example close human relatives such as chimpanzees and why not alien life on other planets or future successors to humans?
... so any attempts to found morality in the behaviour of non human animals requires a translation stage.
Ethical fitnessism is not founded on the behaviour of non-human organisms. Please see the definition of ethical fitnessism in my original comment to DeVliegendeHollander.
No, they probably value something that can be cashed out in fitness promoting terms, like continued survival, or enhanced attractiveness based on resources.
Exactly!
Ethical fitnessism is more intuitive than... (read more)
Humans are animals affected by natural selection, wherefore no translation from animals to humans is necessary or even possible.
An individual is neither a predator nor a mugger by default. An individual is a predator or a mugger because of its traits and behaviour. Probably the mugger does not value the mugging itself. Humans who value the survival of their own behavioural genes would in all probability put into practice and enforce laws against mugging, since allowing mugging would risk adversely affecting not only each individual herself, but also other humans who to a large extent are carriers of the same behavioural genes as this individual. Please see my comment to gjm, where... (read more)
As a fitnessist I certainly do not “hold a position that affects only [my] own actions and [my] opinions of them”. I not only evaluate my own actions, but have opinions of the actions performed by other individuals as well. These opinions are based on how other individuals affect the survival of my behavioural genes. In that sense I pass moral judgement on others, like they pass moral judgement on me.
The fundamental question for any moral theory to answer is “Which actions should be performed?” and ethical fitnessism fully answers that question, although in an indexical fashion. The central question to answer is “Which actions should I myself perform?”, since that question... (read more)
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
The sentence:
What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated.
does not imply any causation.
Natural selection favours certain behaviour, and ethical fitnessism is simply defined as:
…the ethic whose behaviour tends to be maximized as a consequence of natural selection.
Which behaviour that is is an open scientific question. There is no claim that ethical fitnessism causes organisms to perform any behaviour; natural selection is the cause.
It is true that “organisms do not act according to ethical fitnessism”, but that is not what I stated. What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated. It is true by definition. I believe that a strong argument for a moral theory is that it is being practiced more than other moral theories.
As a consequentialist it is hard to predict which actions in fact will maximize the intrinsic value and in retrospect a behaviour that might have been seen as favourable at the time can have been a huge mistake in the long run and such behaviour will not be favoured by natural selection. Natural selection might seem short-sighted but it is not.
None of your propositions reflect any claims made by ethical fitnessism.
Ethical fitnessism is a normal moral theory just as hedonistic utilitarianism, but with differences in its meta-ethics and intrinsic value. It violates neither Hume’s law nor the naturalistic fallacy. It is not the case that nature or evolution implies that ethical fitnessism is right in any higher meaning.
Fitnessism has no special naturalistic definition of the word 'should'. It uses 'should' in the same sense as utilitarianism does.
For a further description and explanation of fitnessism please see my response to DeVliegendeHollander.
The definition of ethical fitnessism can be found in “Ethical Fitnessism. The Ethic of the Fittest Behaviour”, which is mainly in Swedish but there is an English abstract. In the abstract you find the definition:
…the ethic whose behaviour tends to be maximized as a consequence of natural selection.
Exactly which behaviour that is is a scientific question. Dawkins's central theorem of the extended phenotype:
An animal’s behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes ‘for’ that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing the behaviour. [Dawkins, 1982, The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Press, p. 248]
seems to suggest that the behaviour which is... (read more)
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.
I also love to play other types of games! Mostly other boardgames, but also some computer games.
I could not find a source for Kasparov's IQ to be 137, many sites states that he has an alleged or estimated IQ of 190, which doesn't sound very reliable.
As for the IQ average of LW it seem to be under some doubt also, because of the large risk of selection bias.
The example of the predator and the quarry illustrates the nature and origin of self-interest and of conflict between incompatible moral values. Above all, it illustrates the indexicality of ethics.
We are certainly not defining mugging as moral. The idea is not to make your morals as practised as possible, but to make morals realistic, adapted and possible to practice. Ethical fitnessism is well practiced and gives guidance in all situations. Hedonistic utilitarianism, for instance, suffers greatly from... (read more)