If morality is just a set of rules-of-thumb by which we evaluate outcomes, then it's no more than a cognitive shortcut. It has no role to play in a considered assessment of cost/benefit since that would obviously be circular reasoning.

So are you saying that morality has no academic value? If so, actually I would agree with you... but I'd like to hear you come clean on that.

Secondly, whose assessment is it that is ultimately encoded in morality?

Also, your position seems to suggest that more homogeneous societies have a greater capacity for morality. Could you be more explicit about that?

> I see morality as a social institution that's worth preserving

Some form of morality has appeared in every human civilisation, so it can hardly be a social construct. Higher animals also exhibit recognizable moral behaviour.

> it sounds as if I think homogeneous societies are in some

> sense "better" than pluralistic ones, which is almost the

> opposite of what I actually think.

But why do you think that?

> Morality may play a smaller role in pluralistic societies...

> I don't think that that is a bad thing

What evidence to you have to support that? Since you are not making a moral judgement, I assume you can provide empirical data for the benefits of "pluralism".

"It's by no means clear that a cringing dog or a chimp that's been caught having sex with the dominant male's favourite female is feeling anything like moral guilt"

That sounds pretty close to human behaviour as far as I can tell. Of course, people are good a good at embellishing their psychological narrative after the fact. Or perhaps you really do socialise with a higher class of person.

"a general inhibition against causing pain, aversion to having sex with people we grew up with."

You surely don't believe either of these go deeper than the most superficial conditioning. What about Milgram's experiment? Or the numerous examples of incestuous communities (I actually live within 50 miles of such a place, and apparently the incest problem is serious enough to have prompted government action.)

"if you actually value things like freedom of speech and belief, a diversity of available lifestyles to take part in and observe, tolerance of different kinds of sexuality."

Why would I value freedom of speech or lifestyle? In my private life, I naturally prefer to associate with like-minded people. I'm hardly unusual in that respect. Why would I value similarity in my friends, but value difference in my neighbours? Since all humans benefit from cooperation, why should we purposely choose people with different goals, where opportunities to cooperate will be at a minimum? How much discussion can you have before it becomes an argument?

"they are certainly not worse than homogenenous societies in terms of health, longevity, and low per capita numbers of death by violence."

That depends on which society you're talking about, and whether you're referring to ethnic or cultural diversity. America is an ethnically diverse society and the risk of violent crime is indeed lower than in Congo or Nigeria, but it's higher than in Japan or Switzerland.

Also, as you rightly point out, prosperous societies attract diversity but that does not imply the reverse. In fact, immigration is generally associated with ghettoisation, poverty and crime, although that of course depends on the identity of the immigrant group.

On the social side, I'm sure you are already familiar with evidence suggesting lower levels of altruism between ethnically distinct individuals. I shan't bother to go through it unless you really want me to.

> This leads to further, more specific questions about what,

> specifically, we have good reason to accept or reject.

I never realized "do no harm" was all that complicated a concept.

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=morality

•  S: (n) morality (concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct)

•  S: (n) ethical motive, ethics, morals, morality (motivation based on ideas of right and wrong)

It would seem more a question of semantics, and how we define the word “morality” in practical context.  I believe this concept is a naturally emergent phenomenon related to various underlying evolutionary developments including our human tendency to question the objective nature of experience.  That hurts.  Why?  I can hurt him.  Why?  Perhaps because hurting him helps me get something I want?  Why?  Knowing how it feels do I really want it that bad?  Why?  Does it really make me feel that good?  Why?  Do I care?  Why?

I think the ability to incorporate compassionate or at least less selfish considerations into our question matrix is a large part of what distinguishes (most) modern humans from unsophisticated and unthinking brutes.

While I appreciate the academic evaluation and scientific method applied to such a subjective human experience, I think we tend to get ourselves into trouble when we approach the "problem" necessarily as such, where attempts at "solving" involve (perhaps a bit excessively) an elaborate process of "justification."

Though often confused by divergent trends in culturally symbolic language depictions, the core experiential premise of all socially evolved ideas about morality remains clearly rooted in the concept of “do no harm.”  Taken as such the question is a simple one:  What is harmful?  Again it seems rather obvious that only the individual can come to that conclusion for themselves.  Therefore, any attempt to rationalize a "solution" to the "problem" of human nature and that pesky "morality" equation that keeps getting in the way of our experimental “progress” will always remain exclusive of the majority who will not agree with your conclusions, for whatever reasons they are then conveniently expected to justify.

> I don't think that most of our morality is just arbitrary:

> it's connected to widespread human values, interests,

> projects etc.

Not necessarily, though I suppose one would need to distinguish here their own personal concepts of morality and how they relate to similar ideas about ethics.  For example, I may reject the invasion of the sanctity of my singular mind and identity by a technology that seeks to pilfer and manipulate what is perceived as community intellectual property on moral or ethical grounds, not because of any socially indoctrinated belief system, but quite simply because it is a harmful, invasive, selfish violation of my right to life and liberty as a thinking human being.

Too often it seems certain interests tend to overly complicate the root of an experiential "do no harm" defense intentionally by expecting individuals to justify *why* they find such practices invasive, then only seeming to listen when the defense is based on the sort of socially indoctrinated concepts they themselves are conditioned to quickly and conveniently marginalize and reject.  

Meanwhile many unnecessary mistakes are made and violations continue to go uncorrected while the world attempts to untie a needlessly complicated knot of distracting intellectualism, which doesn’t need to be such if the obvious fundamental protections are first secured as paramount to any philosophical or scientific theory.

Circular indeed.  As an aside the whole debate seems rather to be about an exclusively "do what thou wilt" philosophy vs. a (formerly) implied responsibility to a certain standard of civilization in putting such into practice.  "If it harm none, let it be."  I find it ironic how often scientific and academic types fail to see the theological origins of their own core philosophies.  

> I'd prefer to say that pluralistic societies need to operate

> in a way that puts more emphasis on individual choice and

> freedom in many areas of life - while also requiring a lot

> of quite detailed formal regulation of some other things for

> reasons relating to safety, efficiency, ameliorating harsh

> economic outcomes, and so on.

You will find no arguments here.

Side note.  Pluralism would be a cultural analog to genetic diversity.  Having a wider range of thinking in the cultural pool increases the likelihood that the society of individuals comprising the culture will be able to adapt to future challenges.

As for empirical evidence for the benefit of genetic variety, see hybrid vigor and heterosis.  The other extreme, genetic monoculture, is fragile, vulnerable to extinction when their ecological niche changes or when a predator or disease optimizes to attack a weakness.

One of the problems with coming up with a universal theory of morality is the lack of any way to test your theories. If you could perfectly isolate 100 different populations on a 100 Earths and watch their development over time you might see the same moral systems evolve. Some moral systems could be strange attractors. Acceptance of new ideas clearly has survival value if each of these 100 populations had sub-groups that fought with each other, the ones that valued the diversity of thought both inside and outside their population would win most wars. Think of how the Germans treated their Jewish population compared to America that greeted Germany's fleeing Jewish scientists with open arms. It is likely that most the of "Americas" on these worlds will beat most of the "Germanys." This makes more pluralistic societies and societies that are more open to new ideas evolutionarily superior. Evolutionarily superiority is as objective as you can get in these matters. However, if it can be demonstrated that actions that we deem as evil are more evolutionarily beneficial, then the use of the only objective criteria we have will come under question.

All of this is, of course, the stuff of game theory. Game theory is the only attempt to look at these issues with same level of mathematical formalism of physics, or any other of the hard sciences.

It all boils down to what works, In this sense the Darwinian approach is purely utilitarian. On purely utilitarian grounds it can be argued that many of the evil aspects of life are no good for society. If evil people who are good at killing their rivals are the ones making all the decisions, then you are likely going to lose in a war with a society that looks for more suitable qualities in its leaders.

The problem with open societies like we have in the liberal democracies of the west, is that their systems can be gamed to death by bad players. Take the simple problem shown in the movie Idiocracy. Smart, compassionate people can't bear to see poor children starving to death, so they vote for politicians that promise to steal their money and give it to the poor. This loss in income from the smart and compassionate people means they have to postpone having children of their own, because they want their kids to have a good education. Having lost so much of their income every month in taxes they have to wait till they have enough saved, or until they get a raise. Meanwhile, the poor, and very often stupid, people that get this money keep having more and more kids. After a while, it becomes impossible to reverse course; the children and grandchildren of the people who can't understand how a condom works become such a large population it is impossible to get elected without pandering to them. So in the short run democracies produce the greatest achievements in all areas of science giving them supremacy in war (read: survival), but in the long run the stupidest elements of the mob will bread and destroy it through "one man, one vote." If it can be shown that some good values can result in the utter collapse of everything you hold near and dear, can these values really be said to be "good" in objective terms?

Another example is pluralism run amok. What happens when, out of respect of cultural differences, European countries start allowing their Muslim populations to practice sharia law? Pluralism can not tolerate ideas that are inimical to it.

"Having a wider range of thinking in the cultural pool increases the likelihood that the society of individuals comprising the culture will be able to adapt to future challenges."

That's incorrect. Having a wide range of homogeneous societies increases the likelihood that, in the face of some future challenge, at least one society would prove adaptive. However, it's a non-sequitur to suppose that mixing disparate individuals within a single society will provide similar advantages.

"As for empirical evidence for the benefit of genetic variety, see hybrid vigor and heterosis."

Hybrid vigor and heterosis are two words for the same thing. Cross-breeding does not inevitably or even usually result in hybrid vigour... if that were the case, Crufts would be dominated by mongrels!

Hybrids benefit from the low probability of inheriting two deleterious recessive genes. Equally they also suffer from the low probability of inheriting two adaptive recessive genes. So if you're lucky you get hybrid vigour, but if you're unlucky you get outbreeding depression.

Taking a more long term view, recessive traits represent the testing ground where real evolutionary selection occurs. Computer models show that evolution occurs most rapidly with a large number of distinct homogenous populations with intermittent cross-fertilisation. The keyword here is "intermittent".

I recommend you get a good primer in dog-breeding.

"Think of how the Germans treated their Jewish population"

Sorry, I plead Godwin's law because Nazi talk gets boring fast. Anyway, the simple reason the allied side won the 2nd World War is because they massively outnumbered the Axis powers.

On the other hand, it's grateful to you for mentioning the Jews. Besides having made staggering and quite disproportionate contributions to human advancement, they are a genetically and culturally homogeneous group with a long history of inbreeding. Clearly they have not had much use for "hybrid vigour".

"the only objective criteria we have will come under question."

So you're saying that objective criteria are good if they back us up on what we already believe, but we should repudiate any evidence which doesn't tell us what we want to hear?

"their systems can be gamed to death by bad players."

I haven't seen the movie you mention, but your description accurately describes the so-called free-rider problem.  All human societies contain free-riders, but historically their numbers have been kept in check because parasitic behaviour invites retribution from peers. However, modern societies are actively encouraging the multiplication of their parasitic elements, which in a democracy creates a feedback loop.

This is all well and good so long as there exists a responsible society among those empowered (and whose position in the faux-Darwinian food chain have thusly been so radically advanced) by such unprecedented means and technological potential as exists today at all times actively engaging in a comprehensive deep reconnaissance and outreach initiative providing for what each would ask and so require to sustain their own evolutionary identity, a more realistic trickledown without undue judgment if it harm none, once an individual had seen and chosen for themselves what path they would make of it and how and set upon pursuing it...

If it costs too much to beat the drum of space expansion then perhaps we might reconsider certain persistent aspects of our present infrastructure, how much it will cost to maintain, upgrade, and internally justify entire bureaucratic systems to limp that thing along indefinitely, expecting individuals instead to justify their material equivalent worth by sacrifice of a majority of their personal time to an admittedly obsolete system, compared to what it would honestly require to shrug off the master-slave limitation, confess we are all worth existing, and implement a single comprehensive planetary cross-over to a new paradigm of space-age manufacturing, holistic architecture, ecological sustainability, and a more inclusively supportive social marketing agenda.

But I digress, and admit this has little to do with the whole morality question, at least that is unless one chooses to question openly why it is we have so far apparently failed to achieve or convert even a fraction of that potential, and how we can possibly be entertaining (even in jest) ideas of mass-genocide as a solution.

"That is, we cannot provide epistemic justification for claims that assert the existence of objectively prescriptive properties and facts, but we can show how the widespread institution of morality has a point and a place in human social life."

If we are showing how morality has a place in human life - I think we are creating an epistemic justification.

When we rationalize and use logical arguments I think we are bound to creating an objective justification that will contain a core value - whether we define it or not.

I think we should use the universal objective justifications as opposed to cultural etiquette that grows in the manner of a fashion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette

Why do we do anything? To increase happiness and minimize suffering - we seek to be free from involuntary suffering and live as long as possible. This applies to everyone universally.

The difficulty in proving this lies in how humans are subject to irrational beliefs - and temporary and shifting desires - yet the underlying mechanism remains the same - we do things because we believe they will be rewarding and will lessen our pain. We seek to avoid death and pain when possible and promote happiness through continued life.

Morality provides clarity into the core values - the process of rational debate mediates our temporary and shifting desires - protecting what is most important.

The biotechnology revolution will increase the adoption of rational logical processes as we become increasingly the masters of our own biological nature and less subject to the uncaring whims of nature.

Thanks for the critique.  I will have to investigate dog breeding consequences further, though I readily grant that cousin marriage in humans apparently does have positives to counteract the negatives sufficient to enable it to persist in some extant cultures.  (I will also note that the social result of that system is that such cultures tend to be more tribal or clan-oriented and less individualistic; marrying in-clan is a way to preserve wealth as well as perpetuate continuity of culture.)

It may be impossible to have modern cultures that are isolated enough to be independently homogenous with only periodic exchange, as the processes of trade and globalization along with advances in modern transportation and communication would tend to encourage greater uniformity and make contact next to impossible to avoid.

However, if we're willing to go beyond whatever "speed limits" there are in natural biological evolution by modifying ourselves at the germ line level, there's no inherent reason we would have to be constrained by whatever happened to be the historical speed limits of cultural evolution.  All bets are off if we start modifying brain regions involved in moral reasoning.

"One of the problems with coming up with a universal theory of morality is the lack of any way to test your theories."

I think we can test these theories for universal validity among humanity;

1. We are hard-wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

2. We will choose pleasure over pain with all things being equal.

3. Humans will choose continued life over death when truly given the option.

4. Humans will choose to be free from involuntary suffering when given the option.

Humans are not rational and moral creatures (rationales are invented after the fact to explain behavior) - however public policy can be formed by rational/logical debate.

When we codify public policy we create a 'skyhook' - it is inevitable. Our societal rationale is our leviathan - we must create a leviathan that is based upon truths that are universally valid for all humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_%28book%29