[David Cooper]

The best way to explore morality is through thought experiments. Create a scenario and then apply moral rules to it to see if they produce outcomes that feel right (because there are no better alternatives). If they obviously fail that test, they're almost always wrong, but you'll be comparing them with some internalised method of judgement whose rules you don't consciously understand, so what feels right could be wrong. Correct morality depends on thinking the scenario through from the point of view of all the players involved in it in order to be fair to all, and if we consciously use that as our way of calculating morality as well as doing this subconsciously (where we generate a feel for what's right), the two things should be the same and will always match up.

Thought experiments cut through the waffle, showing which rules fall flat and which remain in play. Once some rules have been rejected in this way, they shouldn't keep being brought back in - they've been debunked already and shouldn't be left on the table.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The best way to explore morality is through thought experiments. Create a scenario and then apply moral rules to it to see if they produce outcomes that feel right (because there are no better alternatives). If they obviously fail that test, they're almost always wrong, but you'll be comparing them with some internalised method of judgement whose rules you don't consciously understand, so what feels right could be wrong. Correct morality depends on thinking the scenario through from the point of view of all the players involved in it in order to be fair to all, and if we consciously use that as our way of calculating morality as well as doing this subconsciously (where we generate a feel for what's right), the two things should be the same and will always match up.

Thought experiments cut through the waffle, showing which rules fall flat and which remain in play. Once some rules have been rejected in this way, they shouldn't keep being brought back in - they've been debunked already and shouldn't be left on the table.

Exactly. That's what I'll try to do next in this topic. I'll demonstrate how the universal moral rule that I've proposed previously can be used to answer the questions above.
Hence, instead of using gut feeling, which is subjective, we'll use an objective method.
We can use chess or go games as a comparison for life of conscious beings. Even though the rules and end goals are relatively simple, the practical strategy is extremely complex. The calculation for best strategy in real life is even harder due to its characteristic as non-zero sum game, imperfect information, and involve randomness.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Living a life while knowing the ultimate goal is like a journey climbing a mount. We can't always go straight to the top. In many occations we need to take roundabouts or even set backs, but at least we know that generally we have to go up.

If we don't know the ultimate goal, it will be more like getting lost in a foggy forest on relatively flat terrain. We might take a long way in the wrong direction, or make same mistakes several times before we can finally get out, and it will be much less efficient journey.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I'll recap my assertion into following points:
1. There exists law of causality. Otherwise everything happens randomly, hence there's no point in making plans or responding to anything. In making a plan, a goal must be set, and some rules must be defined to respond to expected situations while executing it, so the goal can be achieved effectively.
2. Moral rules only apply to conscious beings. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being is  one of the highest priority moral rules, if not the highest. If someone can propose another moral rule with even higher priority, it is necessary to have at least one conscious being to follow it. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being gets back as the highest priority.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Some religions assume that there are supernatural beings that will maintain human life for eternity in the afterlife. Hence the existence of conscious being is taken for granted, and there is no point to take action on it, unless commanded by the supernatural beings.
If we follow their logic consistently, the best strategy would include killing babies before they have the ability to make sins, which will make them live happily in heaven for eternity. For religions which acknowledge inherited sins, the killing must be delayed until they are baptised. The killer can then seek for forgiveness.
Fortunately, evolutionary processes have given us instincts to survive. So the scenarios above don't get very far into the mainstream.

[Hadrian]

To me it is a human construct and therefore even if two people agree on some moral issue or other, how each of them see it going to be different.   So I think putting a word like universal beside morality etc. is failing to understand what it is in the first place.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

To me it is a human construct and therefore even if two people agree on some moral issue or other, how each of them see it going to be different.   So I think putting a word like universal beside morality etc. is failing to understand what it is in the first place.

If you limit the applicability of the moral rules to human only, then of course putting the word universal makes it an oxymoron. Besides,  you also have to define the boundaries of humanity itself, which separate human and non-human. Is a homo sapien fetus considered as human? What about other homo species such as Neanderthal and Denisovans? What about their hybrids with homo sapiens like many of us non-African people? What about future descendants of human who colonize Mars and evolve until their DNA no longer compatible with present human?
I have mentioned in the early posts of this topic that disagreements can arise even when all parties agree on the ultimate goal and universal standard. This is due to uncertainty of the future and imperfect information to calculate the best strategy to achieve the goal, which force us to rely on bayesian inference.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There must be some reason why humanity is considered a high priority moral value by human thinkers, despite the limitation I mentioned above. Currently, human is the only known extant species to develop formal moral rules, despite some mixed up in the past with other species from the same genus. Thanks to evolutionary processes happened on earth for the past few billion years. It's currently the only known form of conscious being who is self sustainable. The artificial intelligence in current form is still dependent on human to stay alive.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

In preserving humanity we should be open minded to the idea that our current life form can be improved to increase the probability of our survival. As scientific researches in evolutionary biology told us, if we trace back far enough, we came from ancestors who are not human. If our primate ancestors decide that their life form is the best possible one, hence refuse to mutate and evolve into something else, or our bacterial ancestors develop mechanisms to stop mutations completely, we won't be here to discuss morality in the first place.
They can be seen as stepping stones or scaffoldings to give us a chance to exist. Perhaps our successors will see us the same way.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

We can take some lessons from the development from Alpha Go to Alpha Zero. Alpha Go learnt to play the game based on experience of human players until it beaten the best human in the game. On the other hand, Alpha zero discards those experiences and starts from zero. It turns out that Alpha Zero is the winner.
Learning from human experience has advantages by discarding most of ineffective moves, hence the calculation to get best strategy can be done efficiently. But there is a drawback: it can miss some moves that don't seem to give advantages until far into the next steps of the game, beyond the calculation capability of human brains.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I'll recap my assertion into following points:
1. There exists law of causality. Otherwise everything happens randomly, hence there's no point in making plans or responding to anything. In making a plan, a goal must be set, and some rules must be defined to respond to expected situations while executing it, so the goal can be achieved effectively.
2. Moral rules only apply to conscious beings. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being is  one of the highest priority moral rules, if not the highest. If someone can propose another moral rule with even higher priority, it is necessary to have at least one conscious being to follow it. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being gets back as the highest priority.

3. We should evaluate action/decision based on their effect to the fulfillment of the ultimate goal. Due to imperfect information that we have and uncertainty of the far future, we may not be able to finish complete calculation in time. That's why we need rule of thumb, shortcut or simplified calculation to speed up the result while mostly produce correct answers. Hence the calculation output will take the form of probability or likelyhood.
4. The moral calculation should be done using scientific method, which is objective, reliable, and self correcting when new information is available. Good intentions when done in the wrong way will give us unintended results.

[David Cooper]

There is no special form of morality for humans - morality, when done correctly, is universal, applying to animals, aliens and to all sentient things. Any attempt to define morality which excludes some sentient things because they don't fit the rules of that system is wrong, as is any attempt that has a bias towards humans.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is no special form of morality for humans - morality, when done correctly, is universal, applying to animals, aliens and to all sentient things. Any attempt to define morality which excludes some sentient things because they don't fit the rules of that system is wrong, as is any attempt that has a bias towards humans.

That's what I'm trying to prove here. Thanks for your contributions in this discussion. Critical thinkers like you are what I need to help me build a convincing argumentation by pointing out errors, uncover my blind spots, proposing possible alternatives and providing valuable new information.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

When dealing with a dilemmatic situation, we should take the option which has better effects to the fulfillment of the ultimate goal by considering available resources. Those include time, energy, matter, tools, finance, labor/workforces, space, data processing power, knowledge or information. When the effects are equal or uncertain, we should take the option which uses less resources. Here we need to consider the economic law of diminishing marginal utility.

[alancalverd]

It's [homo sapiens] currently the only known form of conscious being who is self sustainable.

I thin you are using a very narrow definition of conscious and a very broad definition of self-sustainable. We survive by collaboration and exploitation, and nobody on these boards has ever, to my knowledge, offered a useful definition of "conscious" that excluded any other species of plant or animal.

[David Cooper]

...nobody on these boards has ever, to my knowledge, offered a useful definition of "conscious" that excluded any other species of plant or animal.

The key thing that matters is sentience, and it isn't certain that plants aren't sentient, or even that rocks aren't - sentience may be a property of all matter, so we should consider them in our system of morality. It's unlikely that we need to worry about the feelings of most matter too much though as it's extremely unlikely that we're doing anything to push it towards greater suffering, so we should worry most about things with brains where mechanisms are likely in place to generate feelings that can lead to suffering if they're triggered in unhelpful ways. We inherited mechanisms involving pain from simpler animals, and it's likely that these mechanisms are in place all the way down to tiny worms - if worms could manage without pain, the odds are that we would never have changed over to a system with extra, unnecessary complexity involving pain. Our default position should be to assume that anything with a brain might be able to suffer, and that things with no brain (like plants) probably don't suffer from being chopped up for the pot.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

It's [homo sapiens] currently the only known form of conscious being who is self sustainable.

I thin you are using a very narrow definition of conscious and a very broad definition of self-sustainable. We survive by collaboration and exploitation, and nobody on these boards has ever, to my knowledge, offered a useful definition of "conscious" that excluded any other species of plant or animal.

You're right. It turns out very hard to point out what makes human so special among other life forms which grant them higher priority if morality rules. But still, most people will argue that if a stranger human being and any other life forms are on each side of trolley problem's track, they will choose to save the human. Choosing otherwise will make them branded as immoral.
I've tried to describe the continuum of consciousness in post #74 and #104 based on complexity of rules can be followed by a system. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=75380.msg561788#msg561788
We can compare consciousness among systems by their capability to make plans on time scale.
Continuum of consciousness spans from zero such as in rocks to infinity such as in Laplace's Demon.
Consciousness can even vary within a single individual, from when they were fetus, baby, kids, adult, elderly.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

AFAIK, inteligent beings only exist on earth. Humans are the only extant species with adequate consciousness to define and follow moral rules. Only they have technological advancement to protect themselves from foreseeable mass extinction events such as asteroid strike or swelling of the sun.

[David Cooper]

What happens if aliens turn up and apply our moral standards to us with the roles reversed? If we complain about their insistence that they matter and that we don't, they'll just tell us that we're primitive animals because we were stupid enough to consider ourselves to be superior to them, whereas if we hadn't made that mistake, they'd have recognised us as their equals. Getting morality wrong is to sign your own death warrant.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Pleasure and pain are shortcut rules to simplify the moral calculation. They are so simple that even organisms with much lower level of consciousness than average human can follow, which are to seek for pleasure and avoid pain. They can be bypassed by tinkering with neurotransmitters, such as by using drugs or liquors. Physical pain can be reduced by ice pack.