Can Morality be "ontologically soliloquized"?

Dee

@Plaffelvohfen


Interesting piece.You say for morality to exist there must be two moral agents ......anything that doesn’t contain one agent cannot be related to “morality “

If I was the last person on Earth as a moral agent I have a moral responsibility not to cause unjustified harm , that includes to the environment and what it contains , do you agree?

Regarding objective morality and a god as being the source of such 

Would an act kindness and generosity be any less kind , absent of god? Would murder and violence be any less murderous and violent absent of god? No. They would be exactly the same and have the same exact consequences on living beings if given no god. God is therefore an unnecessary middleman, to be rendered irrelevant 

Plaffelvohfen

@Dee

If I was the last person on Earth as a moral agent I have a moral responsibility not to cause unjustified harm , that includes to the environment and what it contains , do you agree?

According to my assertion, if there is absolutely no other moral agents, say there is only vegetal lifeforms, then I really think you really would have no "moral responsibility" whatsoever, and any thoughts or actions you could have or do, would not be related to "morality", if it relates to anything, that thing can't be morality and has to be something else (we may not have a concept for this yet) ... But that is in the absolute, in practice it is another matter of course, let's try to address this...

So can other animals be moral agents? And are moral agents equal in capacity to pass judgments on matters of right & wrong? My opinion on this is that; The capacity to conceptualize and therefore use of morality is a spectrum... A spectrum relating to the size and complexity of cerebral cortexes of living beings. The smaller and simpler a cortex is, the less it can process notions of "morality" and thus have very limited moral agency capacities, and the greater the size and complexification of the cortex, the more it can elaborate on concepts of Morality and its usage, the more moral agency capacity it has... 

So there is a spectrum on which we (humans) are presently on the higher levels, just under us are chimps. bonobos, dolphins, some whale species, slightly lower are the rest of the primates then the rest of the mammals spread across different levels and lower and lower until there is no cortex. It's worthy to note that the absence of cortex doesn't prevent sentience, but does prevent actual moral agency as all actions are dictated by instinct or biological automatism, there is no "reasoning" possible in this case... 

What does that mean, what are the implications of this? Well, what I am aiming at is making a case for an open-ended concept of "Morality", because considering 1:) What we said about morality being related to the size and complexity of cortexes in sentient beings and that 2) We are in no way at the peak of our evolution, that we are still on that never-ending road as a species. It could and probably does mean that we will discover more about what is morality, that as our capacity at using and articulate morality evolve as our brain and cortex does... Exactly like we were able to discover mathematics and perfected it over time, so will we be able to discover more and more about Morality...

We are in no way an "achieved experiment" and no where near a "final form", in 250k years, what will our descendants brain structures look like, how about a million years from now... With higher capacities who knows what we might discover in terms of morality? 

So, if we return to your original question, "If I was the last person on Earth as a moral agent I have a moral responsibility not to cause unjustified harm , that includes to the environment and what it contains , do you agree?"

Considering what I said, I would have to say yes, you do have moral obligations, precisely because you are on a higher level of consciousness than other conscious beings, your ability to articulate what IS morality is higher than anything else on this world where you are the only human.  

Have you looked at the video linked in my original statement about the works of Patricia Churchland? Yes, it's long and technical but it fascinating in regards to possible implications...

Would an act kindness and generosity be any less kind , absent of god? Would murder and violence be any less murderous and violent absent of god? No. They would be exactly the same and have the same exact consequences on living beings if given no god. God is therefore an unnecessary middleman, to be rendered irrelevant

Would an act of kindness and generosity be any less kind absent of God? No, absolutely not... But it would be, absent of at least 1 other moral agent (remember, I assert there's a wide ranging spectrum for qualifying moral agency capacities). The more evolved your cortex is, the better you could identify potential moral agency in other lifeforms, which would thus feed and influence your inner sense of morality... Who know, in a million years we might find out that flies or worms actually can be capable of moral agency... Who knows...

If my concept is valid, God cannot in anyway, be considered to be the source of any morality because of his uniqueness... So there's that...   

Plaffelvohfen

Dee said:

@Plaffelvohfen

Interesting piece.You say for morality to exist there must be two moral agents ......anything that doesn’t contain one agent cannot be related to “morality “

No, it would be : Anything that doesn't involve at least 2 moral agents cannot relate to morality... It would relate to another aspect of philosophy, this might need to be explored further...

Dee

@Plaffelvohfen

Thank you for the piece I appreciate I will now ask a few questions in the spirit of enquiry 

>According to my assertion, if there is absolutely no other moral agents, say there is only vegetal lifeforms, then I really think you really would have no "moral responsibility" whatsoever, and any thoughts or actions you could have or do, would not be related to "morality",

Do you not think you have a moral responsibility to the environment and if so why?

If it’s not a moral responsibility what is it?

>if it relates to anything, that thing can't be morality and has to be something else (we may not have a concept for this yet) ... But that is in the absolute, in practice it is another matter of course, let's try to address this... 

Interesting what branch of philosophy would it fall under in your opinion? 

>So can other animals be moral agents? And are moral agents equal in capacity to pass judgments on matters of right & wrong? My opinion on this is that; The capacity to conceptualize and therefore use of morality is a spectrum... A spectrum relating to the size and complexity of cerebral cortexes of living beings. The smaller and simpler a cortex is, the less it can process notions of "morality" and thus have very limited moral agency capacities, and the greater the size and complexification of the cortex, the more it can elaborate on concepts of Morality and its usage, the more moral agency capacity it has...  

So there is a spectrum on which we (humans) are presently on the higher levels, just under us are chimps. bonobos, dolphins, some whale species, slightly lower are the rest of the primates then the rest of the mammals spread across different levels and lower and lower until there is no cortex. It's worthy to note that the absence of cortex doesn't prevent sentience, but does prevent actual moral agency as all actions are dictated by instinct or biological automatism, there is no "reasoning" possible in this case..

Basic moral codes or patterns have been found in animals which seem to serve them adequately sonits I guess an instinctual type of morality . 

>What does that mean, what are the implications of this? Well, what I am aiming at is making a case for an open-ended concept of "Morality", because considering 1:) What we said about morality being related to the size and complexity of cortexes in sentient beings and that 2) We are in no way at the peak of our evolution, that we are still on that never-ending road as a species. It could and probably does mean that we will discover more about what is morality, that as our capacity at using and articulate morality evolve as our brain and cortex does... Exactly like we were able to discover mathematics and perfected it over time, so will we be able to discover more and more about Morality... 

Morality is ever evolving and continues to do as societies evolve what we regard as moral today may be seen as deeply immoral judged by future generations 

>We are in no way an "achieved experiment" and no where near a "final form", in 250k years, what will our descendants brain structures look like, how about a million years from now... With higher capacities who knows what we might discover in terms of morality? 

I think we may have totally decimhumanity or the planet itself by then 

> So, if we return to your original question, "If I was the last person on Earth as a moral agent I have a moral responsibility not to cause unjustified harm , that includes to the environment and what it contains , do you agree?"

Considering what I said, I would have to say yes, you do have moral obligations, precisely because you are on a higher level of consciousness than other conscious beings, your ability to articulate what IS morality is higher than anything else on this world where you are the only human.  

Well put 

>Have you looked at the video linked in my original statement about the works of Patricia Churchland? Yes, it's long and technical but it fascinating in regards to possible implications...

Would an act kindness and generosity be any less kind , absent of god? Would murder and violence be any less murderous and violent absent of god? No. They would be exactly the same and have the same exact consequences on living beings if given no god. God is therefore an unnecessary middleman, to be rendered irrelevant

Would an act of kindness and generosity be any less kind absent of God? No, absolutely not... But it would be, absent of at least 1 other moral agent (remember, I assert there's a wide ranging spectrum for qualifying moral agency capacities). The more evolved your cortex is, the better you could identify potential moral agency in other lifeforms, which would thus feed and influence your inner sense of morality... Who know, in a million years we might find out that flies or worms actually can be capable of moral agency... Who knows...

Thank you for the video when I get time I shall and I appreciate it 

>If my concept is valid, God cannot in anyway, be considered to be the source of any morality because of his uniqueness... So there's that...   

A god is an absurdity from a Religious standpoint because if his moral code is as they claim the ten commmadments that’s his written source of objective morality if he can change that code as he’s all powerful it cannot be objective, if he cannot he can’t be god as he’s not all powerful 

Plaffelvohfen

@Dee

Do you not think you have a moral responsibility to the environment and if so why?
If it’s not a moral responsibility what is it?

If there is only one possible moral agent (including the lowest possible level of moral agency) in an environment, Morality doesn't exist, that is my fundamental argument. 
Can plants be, in any possible way, considered to have moral agency? If the answer is yes, then I'd have no choice but to say that we would then have a moral responsibility to plants... That's not intuitive though isn't it?

If it's not a moral responsibility what is it?

A survival imperative? If one answers the most fundamental philosophical question "Should I kill myself?" by a Negative, the one implicitly gives value to Existence. 
And since one's existence is contingent to one's environment it follows that one should insure said environment stays as viable as possible...
If anyone answer the question "Should I kill myself" with a yes, the problem solves itself IMO...

Interesting what branch of philosophy would it fall under in your opinion? 

Not sure, Axiology maybe? Or it could just be a matter relating to ethical frameworks... My questioning is a work in progress and subject to change with new data...  This would make a nice profil signature quote...  

Basic moral codes or patterns have been found in animals which seem to serve them adequately sonits I guess an instinctual type of morality . 

Yes, I think it's called proto-morality, which is present in all gregarious animals...  Just found this very interesting article from Stanford University, my original questioning really relates to it.
I may have to rescind everything I've said here after going over this article...  Damn... lol 

 I think we may have totally decimhumanity or the planet itself by then 

I sadly agree...  

MayCaesar

Well, morality does not refer solely to interaction with others. There are certain moral norms in all societies that apply even to the time you spend alone. For example, drinking alcohol, even if you do it away from everyone, quietly in the corner, many moral systems see as wrong.

Imagine if you were alone in the Universe. You started drinking a lot of alcohol and noticed that the effects are very unpleasant. So you come to the conclusion that alcohol is bad for you. But, at the same time, it is pleasurable in certain ways! How can you convince yourself to not give in to pleasure? The easiest way is to make a shortcut to your decision-making by calling drinking alcohol wrong (essentially 'immoral'), which causes guilt when you feel the desire to drink alcohol, and this feedback mechanism keeps you forever sober.

I talked about something - drinking alcohol - that affects your health directly. But the same argument can be applied to anything that, for any reason, you can see as having negative effects. And even if you are all alone in the Universe, and even if you yourself decide what the Universe is (might very well become a reality in a few centuries, when virtual reality goes so far that people literally become gods within their virtual environment) - this still does not quite remove your ability, and even necessity, to tell the right from the wrong. And ingraining these judgments into your moral system is the logical next step.

Dee

@Plaffelvohfen
I think we have reached an impasse as you think if there is only one moral agent morality doesn’t exist , I disagree as I’ve said because even if alone we decide to poison the water in a river destroying everything in it it is that suddenly not an immoral action?

Even if we hack down a tree for no reason is that not an immoral action? 

Its like you're saying on our own we have no moral responsibility because no one else is about , inadvertently this is reasoning the theist latches onto as to why we need an authoritative source of morality 

Thanks for the article 

Plaffelvohfen

@Dee

I don't think we're really at an insurmountable impasse. But I do think I've put the cart before the horse...  Why did I asked this question this way?

I define myself as an absurdist, closer to Camus than Nietzsche. In a very fundamental way, I understand Existence has having no ultimate meaning or purpose. Nietzsche said "God is dead, Nothing matters.". As an absurdist I shouldn't have a problem with moral relativism, but I do because frankly, nihilism sucks... I freely acknowledges that we all share the same fundamental drive to escape the absurdity of Existence, either by suicide, Spiritual Leap of Faith, or Recognition of the Absurd. (Camus said Acceptation I use Recognition, I think it matters to use this word)

Since nihilism sucks, Camus said in essence "There is pleasure". He found values inside himself through his senses of the Outside. There is a social aspect to many of the things he valued, sports, relations, arts, family, all platforms geared toward the well-being of the Self yet always defiant against the Absurd by creating purpose while lucidly accepting the futility of it all. He died at 41 in a car crash in 1960. I often wonder what he would have said if he could have seen what we have discovered since, same for Tesla... Anyway...

Little notable work have been done on the subject after that. Moral relativism integrated into mainstream and since the 80' and 90's, the postmodernism approach has been growing and has been assimilated into our culture. But one problem arose, postmodernism lost the defiant attitude against the Absurd that Camus promoted, it either embraced the Absurd or cowered before it... 24h of international news and reality shows, or 10 minutes of any Trump speech demonstrates that. 

So, short version:  Nietzsche said "God is dead, we're f**ked"... Camus said "We're f**ed, but there is pleasure"... And postmodernism is now saying "Anything goes!!"...  Absurdity is not defied anymore, it's advertised... Therefore, we must rebel and defy the Absurd. 

That is where I started my questioning. I took a step back to where Camus was and I'm trying to find a way to affirm "Sure we're f**ked, but There is Us"... I'm searching for objective truths and values in the social essence of the human experience, using Science as an objective tool to evaluate all aspect of this experience of Existence. And as with any rebellion, we must challenge, redefine, provoke and innovate... 

I may never find objectivity because there may not be any, and it is ultimately futile anyway, but it's the rock I chose to push up the hill forever, listening to progressive metal-rock as I enjoy myself for no reason at all... A headbanging Sisyphus if you like...  

Plaffelvohfen

@MayCaesar

Well, morality does not refer solely to interaction with others. There are certain moral norms in all societies

It's true that we do not have a universally accepted definition for this existential concept that is Morality. And I find that situation annoyingly troublesome... So I'm trying to propose an update to the "Moral Matrix" or a Morality 2.0 for humanity... Better yet, I might push it as far as saying there is an existential need for such an update, but first thing first...

See the part in bold?   If Morality does not refer solely to interactions with others, why did you refer to societies? It's an honest mistake to make & It goes back to my original question, can morality really be explained from a soliloquist point of view? Without any reference to the Outside? I should specify an objective morality, because that's what I'm ultimately after but here I think it won't matter... Not an easy task, the odds are against me, and I very well might fail miserably, but hey I really got nothing better to do, from an existential point of view, being an absurdist and all...    

Imagine if you were alone in the Universe. You started drinking a lot of alcohol and noticed that the effects are very unpleasant. So you come to the conclusion that alcohol is bad for you. But, at the same time, it is pleasurable in certain ways! How can you convince yourself to not give in to pleasure? The easiest way is to make a shortcut to your decision-making by calling drinking alcohol wrong (essentially 'immoral'), which causes guilt when you feel the desire to drink alcohol, and this feedback mechanism keeps you forever sober.

Now this address another problem I have, I have an issue with the notion that an "opinion" regarding oneself can be said to relate to Morality... 

How can this soliloquist talking to himself alone in the universe, justify to himself that this feeling of drunkenness (whether good or bad) is related to Morality? When he eat chocolate ice cream he feels damn good, but he really dislike vanilla for whatever reason... Could he justify to himself that this question of chocolate or vanilla, is a question pertaining to Morality? And would the same be true in a social context as in; Could he justify to others that choosing Vanilla or Chocolate is a Moral matter??

If a question pertains to Morality, it should pertain to Morality every time the question is asked right? Maybe the answer to the question will differ according to context, but the question itself would always relate to Morality... Chocolate / Vanilla = moral matter?? Not very intuitive...

See the problem I have? Could Morality be exocentric in nature, focused on something outside of itself/ourselves and be related to our gregarious nature over which we have no control? We are after all, genetically programmed to be social animals, it's a survival imperative at the earliest stage of our existence. Maybe gregariousness defines our specie at a more fundamental level than we previously thought... We may be getting somewhere from here who knows... 

sear

So if there's only one guy in the cosmos & he eats an apple, it's zip?

But if there's two guys & one of them eats an apple, it's different? Is it only different if they're in the same room? Or would it also be different if they both existed, but in separate galaxies a million light years apart?

Suppose instead of an apple it's a triple martini?

morality (me-ràl´î-tê, mô-) noun
plural moralities
1.    The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2.    A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
3.    Virtuous conduct.
4.    A rule or lesson in moral conduct.

Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition  © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.