[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Through inductive reasoning, we can find similarities among existing moral rules. They are intended to protect larger systems from actions or behaviors of their conscious members, in most cases,
humans . They are enforced through some form of reward and punishment.
Moral rules can't protect a system from non-conscious members/parts, such as in natural disasters. Moral rules can't protect a system from non-members, such as in alien invasion.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Since we have no way of knowing what non-humans think about anything, we have no test of the absolute universality of  any moral standard. The best we can achieve is whatever appeals to humans, and as we know that humans are very varied, we have to assume in the first instance that each of us is no worse a sample of the population than any other individual.

You don't seem to follow the recent progress in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, as well as molecular biology. They suggest that consciousness and individuality comes in many layers with various magnitude in each layers.

No dictionary explicitly limits
 the definition of morality to humans. Since you do, you need to define what constitute humans, and what's not. What's the boundary conditions between them. Was Neanderthals included?
By your definition, rules for post humans can't be called morality, hence they would need to invent a new word to represent similar meaning.

[alancalverd]

Any member of any species can apply the Golden Rule as widely as it chooses, and we certainly observe something akin to it in the collaborative and apparently caring behavior of social species, but apart from heavily domesticated animals like dogs and horses, there's very little evidence of it applying between species. I've heard it said that polar bears are cruel because they don't kill large prey but just bite chunks off it. From the bear's point of view, why waste time and energy killing a human or a fox, if you can hold it down long enough for lunch? 

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I have described consciousness in this thread as well as my other threads discussing about universal terminal goal.
Since they haven't seem enough, here is a simplified description by stating absolute minimum requirements for a system to be called conscious.
- It has internal structures which represent states of itself and its environment.
- That internal structures can change according to the change of the environment.

In my previous posts I've also mentioned another requirement for consciousness which is relevant to morality, which is having internal/subjective preferences. It would follow that conscious systems have the capacity to build two virtual maps internally, which are described in is and ought problem, or known as Hume's guillotine.
Another criteria for a conscious system to apply morality is the capacity to manipulate its environment, which is represented in "is map" in its memory system to get closer to its "ought map", which is affected by its internal/subjective preferences.

The role of moral rules with reward and punishment are then to modify internal/subjective preferences of conscious systems to make them aligned with the goal of larger systems they are being part of (e.g. their family, tribe, company, nation). Primitive forms of those manipulation are done by inflicting pain and pleasure which can be directly felt. The next forms are done by causing fear and giving hope, which can only work for conscious systems with capability of understanding cause and effect, so they can predict/anticipate future condition when some information about the present is given.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If you are still convinced that consciousness is exclusively human feat, or even mammalian feat, here are some researches to recheck your conviction.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a34165311/crows-are-self-aware-like-humans/
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-finds-crows-can-ponder-their-own-knowledge
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2020/09/25/Scientists-observe-conscious-processes-in-crow-brains/3741601042088/

"Nerve cells that represent visual input without subjective components are expected to respond in the same way to a visual stimulus of constant intensity," Nieder said. "Our results, however, conclusively show that nerve cells at higher processing levels of the crow's brain are influenced by subjective experience, or more precisely, produce subjective experiences."

The latest findings, published Friday in the journal Science, suggest consciousness may be more widespread throughout the animal kingdom and its origins farther back on the evolutionary timeline than previously thought.

The oldest common relative between humans and crows lived some 320 million years ago. It's possible consciousness arose then, during the geologic period known was the Carboniferous. It's also possible consciousness developed independently in a variety of animal lineages.

"In any case, the capability of conscious experience can be realized in differently structured brains and independently of the cerebral cortex," Nieder said.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/eabc5534

Basic principles of bird and mammal brains
Mammals can be very smart. They also have a brain with a cortex. It has thus often been assumed that the advanced cognitive skills of mammals are closely related to the evolution of the cerebral cortex. However, birds can also be very smart, and several bird species show amazing cognitive abilities. Although birds lack a cerebral cortex, they do have pallium, and this is considered to be analogous, if not homologous, to the cerebral cortex. An outstanding feature of the mammalian cortex is its layered architecture. In a detailed anatomical study of the bird pallium, Stacho et al. describe a similarly layered architecture. Despite the nuclear organization of the bird pallium, it has a cyto-architectonic organization that is reminiscent of the mammalian cortex.

It's often suggested that primates advantage to get higher consciousness are due to bipedalism and having opposable thumbs which can help them manipulate things. But those things are also found in birds, although with reversed role between front and rear "legs". So in a hypothetical world where all primates go extinct, it's possible that their role as the most conscious organisms on earth would be taken over by birds.

[alancalverd]

The "is and ought" distinction is very helpful in all aspects of engineering. I find it rarely expressed so succinctly in English texts but almost every German installation or service manual I have encountered has a setup table simply headed  |  soll  |  ist  |.

But it is so common that it infringes on your definition of consciousness. Every servo system from a simple wing leveller to a full GPS-coupled track follower and autolander  has a "soll" map, "ist" sensors, and the mechanism to minimise the difference without overstressing the entity it is controlling.

You  might however define consciousness as the ability to depart from the map and make useful compromises when faced with an overriding or conflicting demand. If my passenger is taken ill I can press on, divert, attempt to fix the problem, or tell him to shut up because we have more serious threats (ice, low fuel...) to our survival.  Pigeons, swallows and butterflies have the same ability.   

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Beside here, I've also discuss consciousness in another thread. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=71347.msg586925#msg586925
I decided to split the discussion because they play different roles in each thread. In Universal utopia thread, universal consciousness acts as the objective/target to be achieved as the universal terminal goal. The reasoning relies on anthropic principle and basic deductive logics, which also gave us cogito ergo sum.
On the other hand, this thread treats consciousness as criteria to select appropriate moral rules for various conscious systems. We can't apply the same moral rules for babies, toddlers, teenagers, and adults. The same also applies to non-biological conscious systems. We apply different rules to a full self driving car than to a non-fsd car.

In AI, moral rules work similarly to reward function in reinforcement learning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning

In the diagram above, the agent represents conscious system whose behavior is to be influenced by moral rules. The interpreter represents the authority who wrote those moral rules and capability to enforce them by giving reward and punishment according to agent's behavior. The interpreter supposed to have higher conscious level than the agent, as we can see from the relationship between parents and their children, teachers and pupils, government and people, generals and soldiers, philosophers and disciples, business owners and their employees, pet owners and their pets, programmers and AI softwares. In not so far away future, an AGI could act as the interpreter for narrower AIs, or even people by taking many roles of governments.

[alancalverd]

We apply different rules to a full self driving car than to a non-fsd car.

I would have thought Asimov's Laws of Robotics would apply to both. The problem with FSDs is to define "reasonable behavior" where a conflict arises. Real life is more complicated than the trolley problem because cars don't run on rails and civil law distinguishes between species.

Simple choice: hit the human or hit the dog? Your driving instructor probably told you to aim for the dog because they can accelerate quicker than humans. There is no exception for philosophers, priests or politicians, though in Utopia they would all wear camouflage, so simply avoiding the dog would be an adequate defence.

Hit the dog or hit the cat? Legally you must report colliding with a dog because they are considered "valuable property" and the owner may even be liable for the damage to your car if the dog was not under control,. But if you run over a cat, it is considered to be a wild animal of unprotected species, even if it is chipped, and you don't need to report it.

But is it safe to stop at all? Your FSD car may be proceeding at a reasonable pace and able to stop on sheet ice, but the truck or bus behind you, can't.   

Suddenly, it all gets a bit more difficult.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is no exception for philosophers, priests or politicians

Many moral rules applicable to kids are still applicable to adults. They may only set minimum requirement of consciousness level, but doesn't have maximum limit.

Legally you must report colliding with a dog because they are considered "valuable property" and the owner may even be liable for the damage to your car if the dog was not under control,.

That depends on the country where you are in.

But is it safe to stop at all? Your FSD car may be proceeding at a reasonable pace and able to stop on sheet ice, but the truck or bus behind you, can't.   

This encourages the development of virtual universe I discussed in another thread, which is needed to minimize surprises.

[alancalverd]

Let's cut to the chase in one area at least.

Sometime in the last century I signed up for the Open University foundation course in Humanities. The first term was about distinguishing between homo sapiens and other animals, and after 3 months, they had not come up with a single valid distinction. Being desperate to hand in my term essay, I asked the first person I met at work the next day. Without a moment's hesitation he said "Man records anything that is too trivial to remember". 

Now read on....although it will be a bit trivial!

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There are some humans in isolated societies that hasn't developed writings. Some may had it in the past, but stopped doing it anymore.


There is an article describing evolution of human intelligence that I'd like to share.
https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-what-fossils-and-dna-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-modern-intelligence-143717

Here are some interesting quotes.

  Bones of primitive Homo sapiens first appear 300,000 years ago in Africa, with brains as large or larger than ours. They’re followed by anatomically modern Homo sapiens at least 200,000 years ago, and brain shape became essentially modern by at least 100,000 years ago. At this point, humans had braincases similar in size and shape to ours.

Assuming the brain was as modern as the box that held it, our African ancestors theoretically could have discovered relativity, built space telescopes, written novels and love songs. Their bones say they were just as human as we are.   

We inherited our humanity from peoples in southern Africa 300,000 years ago. The alternative – that everyone, everywhere coincidentally became fully human in the same way at the same time, starting 65,000 years ago – isn’t impossible, but a single origin is more likely.   

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Here is an interesting video describing Cultural Evolution Theory.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

IMO, human's failure to reach consensus on universal morality so far is caused by collective inabilities to perform logical reasonings to find/discover the universal terminal goal. It is in turn is caused by unwillingness to make some paradigm shifts, especially those related to the concepts of life, consciousness, and individuality.
Many things people thought as fundamental may turn out to be not fundamental at all. Instead, they are merely instrumental, whose applicability depends on situations at hand, which are influenced by their positions in space and time.

[alancalverd]

Taking these posts in reverse order:

I think you will find the Golden Rule underpins most if not all moral codes, but "tribal" loyalty can oppose it when there is a conflict between us and them. Sometimes the conflict is real (competition for essential resources) but the most damaging conflicts are those invented by the usual parasites.

Full marks for the Cultural Evolution video. Collaboration is essential for human survival,  and specialisation makes civilisation efficient, thus increasing the speed of cultural evolution. I have time to develop medical devices because someone else hunts my food, and my inventions may keep him alive! 

Assertions about the relationship between intelligence and size of human brains are unscientific nonsense. Anyone who has seen a 1960's computer will tell you that however you measure the ability of a machine to process data, it isn't related to size,

Writing isn't the only means of recording the trivial. Cave art, folk song and wampum have survived for millennia. But the food processing techniques that the natives tried to teach Burke and Wills were too important to be written down - you "just grew up knowing how to do it".

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The role of moral rules with reward and punishment are then to modify internal/subjective preferences of conscious systems to make them aligned with the goal of larger systems they are being part of (e.g. their family, tribe, company, nation). Primitive forms of those manipulation are done by inflicting pain and pleasure which can be directly felt. The next forms are done by causing fear and giving hope, which can only work for conscious systems with capability of understanding cause and effect, so they can predict/anticipate future condition when some information about the present is given.

Moral rules can be considered as a subset or a special case of reward function to modify a conscious agent's response to various stimuli/inputs.
Reward and punishments are indirect methods to execute back propagation process in neural network training, which adjust the weights of each neural connection. They are only needed if there is no known practical method to modify the behaviour of conscious agent, such as rewiring brain circuitry. Some drugs may have limited usage with temporary effect, but there could be unknown side effects in long term. Similar case for surgery of some organs to modify hormone activations. They work indirectly. Direct brain connection may offer some help, but it needs extreme cautions for unwanted consequences if the users are not aware of the universal terminal goal.
Traditional reward and punishment rely on the facts that most consious agents in existence was products of biological natural selection who posses desire to preserve their lives. The pain and pleasure signalings are methods to achieve that. So do fear and hope.
Most currently existing intelligent machines are not designed to put their existence as one of highest priority in their job. They are considered expendable. That's why we don't apply reward and punishment to modify their misaligned behaviors. Direct readjustment of their memory or weight of artificial neural connections are much more effective and efficient.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The quality of moral rules are measured based on their effectiveness and efficiency in helping conscious agents in decision making to achieve their fundamental goals. Those goals are what differentiate moral rules from other kind of rules such as game rules and technical rules.
Ancient moral rules that are considered obsolete are usually abandoned due to their ineffectiveness or inefficency, compared to other moral rules that are still practiced now. For example, human sacrifice is demonstrably ineffective to prevent famine or natural disaster. Slavery is now considered as inefficient way of acquiring labor, due to rebellious tendency of oppressed human individuals. Using machinery is a more efficient alternative.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Most currently existing intelligent machines are not designed to put their existence as one of highest priority in their job. They are considered expendable.

This article shows a clear example of the above statement.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37062/china-conducts-test-of-massive-suicide-drone-swarm-launched-from-a-box-on-a-truck

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

For example, human sacrifice is demonstrably ineffective to prevent famine or natural disaster.

Somehow in 21st century we can still find groups of people who believe that executing gays can prevent natural disaster which makes it a moral action, based on stories written in old scriptures.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

As I mentioned earlier, a moral rule is categorically a meme. A moral system is a meme complex.
In order to survive, those memes need to preserve conscious agents that bear them. But as long as there exist some backup copies, some sacrifices are acceptable. That's why we can still find moral rules such as altruism, patriotism, and martyrdom, which is effectively harmful to some of their conscious agents.

[alancalverd]

Most currently existing intelligent machines are not designed to put their existence as one of highest priority in their job.

Depends on your definition of intelligence. Mine is "the ability to surprise". A machine that prioritises the execution of one function above all else, cannot surprise its maker.