Posted 06 May 2005 - 11:38 PM
1Arcturus,
I think your last sentence ("harmonize our lives together without homogenizing ourselves") sums up our agreement pretty well. Yes, there may be exceptions to the propositions I listed, but humans are still basically the same species and therefore share most of the same general behaviors, cognitive activities, desires, problems, and neural hardware as other humans. This doesn't mean that we can easily arrange a utopic, homogeneous society, and it doesn't mean we can't disagree, but it is a fundamental, empirically established insight that should enter into all discussions of human morality.
Sure, there is plenty of diversity among human cultures which should be respected and acknowledged, but we should also acknowledge our basic commonality and recognize that strategies for harmony in small human groups are probably scalable to a global level. (The tension between two nations is similar in structure to the tension between two tribes, or even two persons, in terms of the psychological dynamics going on between both sides.) From the perspective of a smarter being, human moralities are sure to appear deterministic and shallow, and easily put into a configuration where everyone is basically happy and the altruism/egoism dichotomy becomes irrelevant because everything goes so well that we don't have to constantly behave selfishly in order to simply survive.
Yes, there are millions or more moral choices. They can generally be represented by asking what types of choices people would choose in controversial moral issues of the day. Sometimes people all agree on something and simply move on. "Slavery is bad", "murder is wrong", "do as well as you can without making the lives of others miserable", etc., are general moral tendencies held by a significant percentage of the population throughout the developed world, and it would take a major economic or political collapse for us to ever backpedal on these tendencies. Though there will always be people that buck the moral trend of the day, this trend still exists and is arguably headed (by a variety of imperatives including economic ones) towards greater global cooperation, understanding, and altruism.
Hm, okay, I didn't realize that the word "morality" was etymologically related to the Latin word for custom. I suppose another word would have been more appropriate to describe what I was talking about. Compared to all possible alien species, human responses and the way that humans do things are incredibly similar. If two human beings were two newly built aircraft, they would be aircraft with 99.9% or more commonality in the way their moving parts operate. This is not the same thing as "having the same morality", it's just pointing out that differences in morality must correspond to a 0.1% (or whatever) difference in neural structure. We butt heads with each other not due to our differences in the greater scheme of things, but because we were built by evolution to compete, and to take up certain moral views based what culture we come from, the level of resources we have access to, our genetic predispositions, etc. These differences, however, might be considered trivial if observed from a sufficiently detatched viewpoint.
You say, "I also think of happiness as a kind of objective standard that will even point to a higher-order harmonization of desires that will work for most people. But not for all." Most definitely. If we make up a new word to replace happiness, like "I-want-it-ness", then we can include everybody, I should think. No one wants what they don't want.
Underneath the twisted mistakes touted as altruism is true altruism, the point of view it might be best to take if we end up with the power of gods (nanotech, AI, etc.) Being selfish in human form is okay, but if you can reshape the world any way you want, it's best to care for others. If I became a god overnight, wouldn't you want me to think this way?
Using the word "absolute" to describe any sort of commonality in human morality is perhaps a poor word choice. "Agreement", or "harmony" seem to work though, and once you can demonstrate to people that you aren't trying to screw them over, and that you share the same basic values, they will start to see you as part of the same social group and agree with a remarkably large amount of what you have to say. People don't talk as much about their moral agreements as their disagreements because often the best way to fit into a social group is to disparage the views of those outside it.
No purely altruistic motive has arisen in evolution because evolution has use for altruism only insofar as it increases genetic fitness. But this doesn't mean we couldn't create pure altruism, or perhaps choose pure altruism if we thought it were the right choice.
Is it necessary for a given human being to be altruistic to have a deep and detailed appreciation of the world? I would argue that love for one's fellow man is a deep virtue and that the sensations we get from caring about others - not just our family or friends, but humankind as a whole - are indispensable aspects of the human experience. What kind of deep and detailed appreciation of the world can you get if you don't have a deep and detailed appreciation of the beings living in it?
Of course, we should not force altruism on human beings without their consent. That would lead to the kind of dysfunctional society you're talking about. When I say that certain human customs cause responses favored by one group and disfavored by another, and this will eventually need to be fixed, I mean that we eventually need to set things up such that all customs correspond to a common standard that respects self-direction, liberty, freedom, etc. In this way, customs could vary and perhaps be frowned upon by certain human groups, but would never be outright evil (i.e., dowry laws, female circumcision, etc.) This would create a new foundation that would possibly lead to mutual respect between all human cultures. There is also voluntary brain reengineering/enhancement if it turns out that human beings are just too fundamentally immature to get along with each other. That is what transhumanism is all about.