[alancalverd]

By standard of some other species, humans are either symbionts, parasites, predators, or preys. You need to explain why one species is to be given priviledges over others.

Because life is mostly a competition between species. The characteristic that distinguishes animals from plants is the inability to synthesise essential nutrients from nonliving sources, so all animals have to kill something to live. From there on, we are either competitors, predators, prey or parasites, with very few examples of interspecies collaboration. So you can't expect the rules that apply within a species to apply between all species.

Many years ago a girl was successfully prosecuted for torturing a prawn. No kidding. She worked in a shellfish factory where the job was to boil buckets of prawns. She entertained her workmates by making a prawn "dance" on a hotplate. The RSPCA  claimed that boiling prawns was a necessary step in food preparation but causing discomfort or death of any species for entertainment was demeaning. Her employers supported the prosecution.

My local ratcatcher has a very skilful dog, but won't let the customers watch him at work.

[alancalverd]

Whatever idea you can come up with, philosophers will always find a name for it. At least they will classify your idea into one or more existing categories. IMO, your morality is deontological, since actions or decisions are morally judged by their compliance with some rules, instead of their consequences. But somehow you suggested that we should do immoral things in case they produce more desirable consequences. This inconsitency would make it hard for any conscious agents to follow your morality reliably.

For "philosopher" read "parasite" in my book. 

You wouldn't like it if I shot you. You wouldn't shoot your own family. So shooting people is immoral. That is the pacifist argument.  Now imagine your family are being attacked by a rabid Trumpist with a gun. Do you attempt moral persuasion, or shoot?

I've said it before: moral and good are not the same thing. I've no doubt a philosopher would find a complicated way of saying it too, if he could understand it.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

On the other hand, if they also want the same pain to be inflicted to them, they are not immoral according to golden rule.

That's why we have two tests. And you must remember that even if your proposed action meets both criteria in your own mind, that doesn't make it "right", which is defined by the moral standards of the majority as expressed in criminal law.

Criminal laws don't use golden rule as their basis. It means your rules are incomplete for a human moral standard, let alone the universal one.

[alancalverd]

It is at least the implicit basis of law in a civilised (i.e. non-theocratic) society. Why else would one-on-one assault, fraud, libel etc be considered wrong by  a judge and jury who had no part in the process?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Because life is mostly a competition between species. The characteristic that distinguishes animals from plants is the inability to synthesise essential nutrients from nonliving sources, so all animals have to kill something to live. From there on, we are either competitors, predators, prey or parasites, with very few examples of interspecies collaboration. So you can't expect the rules that apply within a species to apply between all species.

As long as you can't let go the traditional concept of individuality, you won't be able to build an interspecies moral system. What you need is to treat the ecosystem as a superorganism.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

You wouldn't like it if I shot you. You wouldn't shoot your own family. So shooting people is immoral. That is the pacifist argument.  Now imagine your family are being attacked by a rabid Trumpist with a gun. Do you attempt moral persuasion, or shoot?

It doesn't work for real nihilists. Though they are rare, we can't say for sure that they don't exist.

[alancalverd]

you won't be able to build an interspecies moral system.

And why would I want to? The dog is my friend, the flea is our common enemy. Actually, cat fleas are more of a problem: dog fleas don't much care for human blood.

[charles1948]

Usuf seems to advocate an ultimate, universal "super-organism".  Which can behave however it wants.

With no constraints on its behaviour.  Because there are no individual species, no individual dissenting minds, to say: "Hey - you can't do that - it's not morally right!

Can't you see the elegant logic of Usuf's solution?  The problem of "Morality" is simply abolished!

[alancalverd]

You wouldn't like it if I shot you. You wouldn't shoot your own family. So shooting people is immoral. That is the pacifist argument.  Now imagine your family are being attacked by a rabid Trumpist with a gun. Do you attempt moral persuasion, or shoot?

It doesn't work for real nihilists. Though they are rare, we can't say for sure that they don't exist.

Drunken Trump voter: "I'm gonna kill you commie atheist Democrat, Yusuf, and all your family, in the name of freedom and democracy 'cos you stole an election, whatever that  is."

Yusuf: "Just checking: are you a nihilist? If so, I may have to shoot you. If not, I'd like to see where your philosophy fits in with the concept of an ultimate and nonspeciesist moral goal."

Pull the other one, mate!

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

you won't be able to build an interspecies moral system.

And why would I want to? The dog is my friend, the flea is our common enemy. Actually, cat fleas are more of a problem: dog fleas don't much care for human blood.

Because we don't live alone.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Usuf seems to advocate an ultimate, universal "super-organism".  Which can behave however it wants.

With no constraints on its behaviour.  Because there are no individual species, no individual dissenting minds, to say: "Hey - you can't do that - it's not morally right!

Can't you see the elegant logic of Usuf's solution?  The problem of "Morality" is simply abolished!

You seem to forget that moral rules are just tools, and getting a universal morality is just an instrumental goal to help achieving the universal terminal goal, which I discuss in a separate thread.
There is a constraint, which differentiates it from nihilism. I've mentioned it several times already, but you seem to forget it. It's to avoid getting the worst case scenario.

In this thread I've come into conclusion that the best case scenario for life is that conscious beings keep existing indefinitely and don't depend on particular natural resources. The next best thing is that current conscious beings are showing progress in the right direction to achieve that best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is that all conscious beings go extinct, since it would make all the efforts we do now are worthless. In a universe without conscious being, the concept of goal itself become meaningless. The next worst thing is that current conscious beings are showing progress in the wrong direction which will eventually lead to that worst case scenario.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

You wouldn't like it if I shot you. You wouldn't shoot your own family. So shooting people is immoral. That is the pacifist argument.  Now imagine your family are being attacked by a rabid Trumpist with a gun. Do you attempt moral persuasion, or shoot?

It doesn't work for real nihilists. Though they are rare, we can't say for sure that they don't exist.

Drunken Trump voter: "I'm gonna kill you commie atheist Democrat, Yusuf, and all your family, in the name of freedom and democracy 'cos you stole an election, whatever that  is."

Yusuf: "Just checking: are you a nihilist? If so, I may have to shoot you. If not, I'd like to see where your philosophy fits in with the concept of an ultimate and nonspeciesist moral goal."

Pull the other one, mate!

If I were a nihilist, I would say, "Do whatever you want. It doesn't really matter anyway."
The Trump supporters can't be nihilists since they care about an election being stolen.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If we know what the universal terminal goal is, than the answer to morality would become straightforward. The more information we have about the situation can only be useful if we have the fundamentals right. As I mentioned before, not every bit of information has the same significance. In every project, the goal is always one of the most significant bit of information, if not the most. If we set the wrong goal, then the more other bits of information that we get will only bring us further away from achieving the right goal. The project I'm talking about here is living a meaningful life.

In another thread I've mentioned about deep believe network which models how a conscious agent work. The terminal goal of a conscious agent would reside in the deepest layer of the believe network.

Intelligent agents are expected to have the ability to learn from raw data. It means that they have tools to pre-process those raw data to filter out noises or flukes and extract useful information. When those agents interact with one another, especially when they must compete for finite resources, the more important is the ability to filter out misinformation. It requires an algorithm to determine if some data inputs are believable or not. At this point we are seeing that artificial intelligence is getting closer to natural intelligence. This exhibits a feature similar to critical thinking of conscious beings.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 02/11/2020 22:04:11
Descartes has pointed out that the only self evident information a conscious agent can get is its own existence. Any other information requires corroborating evidences to support it. So in the end, the reliability of an information will be measured/valued by its ability to help preserving conscious agents.


Quote
In machine learning, a deep belief network (DBN) is a generative graphical model, or alternatively a class of deep neural network, composed of multiple layers of latent variables ("hidden units"), with connections between the layers but not between units within each layer.[1]

When trained on a set of examples without supervision, a DBN can learn to probabilistically reconstruct its inputs. The layers then act as feature detectors.[1] After this learning step, a DBN can be further trained with supervision to perform classification.[2]

DBNs can be viewed as a composition of simple, unsupervised networks such as restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs)[1] or autoencoders,[3] where each sub-network's hidden layer serves as the visible layer for the next. An RBM is an undirected, generative energy-based model with a "visible" input layer and a hidden layer and connections between but not within layers. This composition leads to a fast, layer-by-layer unsupervised training procedure, where contrastive divergence is applied to each sub-network in turn, starting from the "lowest" pair of layers (the lowest visible layer is a training set).

The observation[2] that DBNs can be trained greedily, one layer at a time, led to one of the first effective deep learning algorithms.[4]:6 Overall, there are many attractive implementations and uses of DBNs in real-life applications and scenarios (e.g., electroencephalography,[5] drug discovery[6][7][8]).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_belief_network

Let's explore further to the diagram above to find useful patterns applicable in discussing morality. The lowest layer represents sensory inputs, which can be found in most automatons and simple organisms, besides the more complex conscious agents. The higher layers represent longer term goals/reference/deeper believe. The highest layer represents the terminal goal of the system.
Information (or misinformation) in higher layers have higher significance in moral judgement. It's comparable to the hierarchy I quoted before.

The deep belief layers above is similar to OSI model.

The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a conceptual model that characterises and standardises the communication functions of a telecommunication or computing system without regard to its underlying internal structure and technology. Its goal is the interoperability of diverse communication systems with standard communication protocols.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model



Morality concerns with errors/misinformation in high layers of the belief system. Errors in lower layers are less relevant to morality. They are more suitable to be fixed using technical controls.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/capitol-riots-garret-miller-says-he-was-following-trumps-orders-apologizes-to-aoc.html

A Texas man charged with invading the Capitol and threatening Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday that he was effectively following then-President Donald Trump’s orders when he joined a mob that stormed Congress on Jan. 6.

Garret Miller also apologized to Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for writing “Assassinate AOC” in a Twitter post. He said he would be willing to testify to Congress or in a trial about the riot.

Miller, 34, had on a social media account also threatened a Capitol Police officer who fatally shot a fellow rioter, saying he planned to “hug his neck with a nice rope,” authorities have said.

The Richardson resident’s apology came as a federal judge in Dallas ordered him detained without bail pending trial, after finding he was both a danger to the community and a flight risk, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.

MIller is one of dozens of people charged with participating in the riot, which began shortly after Trump held a rally outside the White House, where he urged supporters to pressure Congress to reject the election of Joe Biden as president.

In a statement released by defense attorney Clinton Broden, Miller said he had been motivated by Trump’s false claims about having been cheated out of reelection by ballot fraud and said, “I am ashamed of my comments.”

“I was in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, because I believed I was following the instructions of former President Trump and he was my president and the commander-in-chief. His statements also had me believing the election was stolen from him,” Miller said.

“Nevertheless, I fully recognize Joe Biden is now the President of the United States and that the election is over. Donald Trump is no longer president and I would not have any reason to continue to follow his lead.”

“While I never intended to harm Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez nor harm any members of the Capitol police force, I recognize that my social media posts were completely inappropriate. They were made at a time when Donald Trump had me believing that an American election was stolen,” he said.

Miller said: “I want to publicly apologize to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and the Capitol police officers. I have always supported law enforcement and I am ashamed by my comments.”

Manipulation of a belief system at high layers can make otherwise normal person to commit immoral actions. Similar thing happened in the mind of many terrorists.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

It is at least the implicit basis of law in a civilised (i.e. non-theocratic) society. Why else would one-on-one assault, fraud, libel etc be considered wrong by  a judge and jury who had no part in the process?

Because if those actions are allowed without penalty, many more will be done by the same perpetrators as well as others who learn about them. The society as the bigger system where people are being part of will collapse and stop functioning.

[alancalverd]

That doesn't make them inherently wrong, nor is it particularly likely that everyone will do such things.

If the majority of the population were inclined to consider an action desirable or even tolerable, it wouldn't be illegal. Hence a history of slavery, constitutional antisemitism and anticatholicism, and tolerance of wife-beating.

Nor does making something illegal stop it happening: the incidence of sheep-stealing has not increased since it ceased to be a capital offence, and 90% of BMW drivers consider 70 mph to be "purely advisory".   

[alancalverd]

Manipulation of a belief system at high layers can make otherwise normal person to commit immoral actions. Similar thing happened in the mind of many terrorists.

There are enough instances from psychological experiments and the recruitment of concentration camp torturers to suggest that all that is required to do things that are obviously immoral is the appearance of authority or permission.

[Jolly2]

Manipulation of a belief system at high layers can make otherwise normal person to commit immoral actions. Similar thing happened in the mind of many terrorists.

There are enough instances from psychological experiments and the recruitment of concentration camp torturers to suggest that all that is required to do things that are obviously immoral is the appearance of authority or permission.

That is incorrect the milgram experiment showed about 61% of participants were prepared to follow the lead of an authority figure compared to the 39% who would resist.   

If anything its evidence that the 60% need to be taught that it's ok to resist authority on occasion, not that the situation is helpless.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

That doesn't make them inherently wrong, nor is it particularly likely that everyone will do such things.

Setting up moral rules is part of social engineering. They don't have to be perfect to get positive impacts.
It doesn't take the majority doing bad things, let alone everyone, to destroy a civilization. It only needs to pass a certain threshold, which can be very low. The value depends on the other characteristics of the society.
The functioning of a social structure is often compared to that of a human body. It could die if a few percentage of its cells turn into cancer.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If the majority of the population were inclined to consider an action desirable or even tolerable, it wouldn't be illegal. Hence a history of slavery, constitutional antisemitism and anticatholicism, and tolerance of wife-beating.

That's what democracy is about, and that's why Socrates didn't like it. But as long as they survive, they still have a chance to improve so they can get closer to the best case scenario.
In ancient cultures, slavery can be viewed as a better alternative to genocide, at least for the winners of tribal wars. It's arguably better for the losers too.
Human sacrifice was thought to be a moral action. They didn't check its effectiveness since scientific methods weren't widely embraced yet.
Some ancient human societies might tolerate or even praise killing Neanderthals when they were still existing. But apparently there were rebels, which is indicated by DNA sequence of some modern human races.
We in modern societies think that they are immoral because we have found better alternatives which are more effective and efficient to get us closer to our common goals.