@Putin33 I'm not saying that my personal morality is universal, I'm saying that morality is a universal instinct, rather than "useful fictions" contrived for and by an "organized society." I've got to find and re-read the stuff that persuaded me that that was the case. But I'm totally *not* persuaded by your completely relativistic "useful fictions" as the basis for morality. Where the hell is that coming from? I'm botching my presentation of all the research, certainly, but your stance seems to have no backing at all.

And you are TOTALLY WRONG about the color. You're confusing the arbitrarily chosen names we use to COMMUNICATE properties from one human to another with the actual properties. A red object is red, because it reflects or emits red light. That is a property of the object. It would have that property of reflecting or emitting red light even if every human on earth was color blind, there just wouldn't be a name for that property. It *is* a property of the object. Particles had the property of "weak charge" for all of the time before it's the discovery of the "weak force", even though there was no name or human concept for it.

"I don't see how this can be so hard"

Neither do I. I've been repeating the same thing 20 times and even cited physicists who repeated what I said and nothing is getting through.

Calling red something objective is like calling a dream or hallucination real and objective. It's just a neural stimulus held in common by humans. That we might experience a hallucination when exposed to certain substances or particles doesn't mean that the hallucination is a real property of the external world. Same with color. There is no such thing as 'red light'. There are just wavelengths that are perceived as red by the human eye.

"Putin33 I'm not saying that my personal morality is universal"

Yes you are. You said humans value human life over non-human life because it's hard-wired into us, it's an instinct. You are asserting that certain values which you personally hold are universally held, timeless instincts.

At least thats testable as a hypothesis though. There is strong evidence that morality is guided by instinct, though i may be wrong about the interaction with the rhino. you assert that morality is based in useful fictions, with no evidence or test for correctness. how can we determine if your useful fiction theory is true?

also, when red is defined relative to an objective wavelength measurement it most certainly does have meaning outside of human experience. It is a measurement rather than a qualitative subjective experience when objectively drfined, and it is a property that an object can possess.

How do we figure out if its true? Test whether moral rules vary across time & space; and test whether social groupings existed prior to the formation of moral rules; or if moral behavior existed prior to the formation of social groupings.

If morality varies and social groups preceded the development of morality, I think the useful fiction theory would be strongly indicated.

Well according to the Stephen Pinker at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 , research indicates that the moral rules all seem to be elaborations on the same five universal, underlying moral instincts, which would indicate that morality does *not* fundamentally vary. Do you have any contrary evidence?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln2930rBisg

The only thing better than a rhino hunt would be if Putin was riding it...and I aimed high.

OK, putin, this is just a stupid semantic argument because you are insisting on a particular definition of a word, despite its frequently being used other ways (including by physicists, if that were somehow relevant). I can't see that we have any substantive disagreement, so we'll leave it there.

R-e-e-e-e-d Rhino! Yummmmmmmmmmmm!

"I can't see that we have any substantive disagreement,"

You actually do not have a substantive disagreement. Anyone with *any* basic knowledge knows that you are right, and he is wrong....Putin, pathetic, shit-sucking, hate-filled asshole that he is siomply seeks to argue with anyone about anything. No doubt, tomorrow you will find him in another thread arguing for the definitive definition of "red", because that just the sort of assclown he is.

So forgive yourself the mistake of taking his vomits argument seriously, and have a better night.

Some men hunt for sport,
Others hunt for food,
The only thing I'm hunting for,
Is an outfit that looks good...

See my vest, see my vest,
Made from real gorilla chest,
Feel this sweater, there's no better,
Than authentic Irish setter.

See this hat, 'twas my cat,
My evening wear - vampire bat,
*These white slippers are albino
African endangered rhino.*

Grizzly bear underwear,
Turtles' necks, I've got my share,
Beret of poodle, on my noodle
It shall rest,

Try my red robin suit,
It comes one breast or two,
See my vest, see my vest,
See my vest.

Like my loafers? Former gophers -
It was that or skin my chauffeurs,
But a greyhound fur tuxedo
Would be best,

So let's prepare these dogs,
Kill two for matching clogs,
See my vest, see my vest,
Oh please, won't you see my vest

What about you man? Do you believe the basis for morality is in fiction, or the scientific research that suggests it is based in instinct, or something else?

Morality is based in social evolution. The only "instinct" about it is our innate desire to be accepted which comes from a survival instinct because, despite being the dominate species on the planet, we are not physically evolved to survive as a species in a solo situation. Hell, most of us would starve to death or succumb to the elements if put through standard Marine Corps survival training for a week.

The finer details of morality, certainly, but there are core elements that run deeper. Your average human in every society has been reluctant to kill, and the instinct against incest is based on fairly well understood biological processes.

"research indicates that the moral rules all seem to be elaborations on the same five universal, underlying moral instincts, which would indicate that morality does *not* fundamentally vary"

Did you read this link? I don't know where you got the notion that Pinkner thinks morality doesn't vary.

"The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother? The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres."

Furthermore, there is no "evidence" here. This article is theoretical.

Ironically, your friend here also says color is a figment!

Also, elsewhere he says:

"The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?"

He concludes by saying that moral realism is not feasible, at least in the strong sense.

Anyway, the list Pinkner provides of moral differences between cultures is satisfying enough. Also, the fact that certain eastern cultures, particularly those espousing Indian philosophies, have long had traditions of viewing certain or even all non-human life as sacred debunks the ethnocentric nonsense that it is "human instinct" to view human life as self-evidently superior in value.

I said it indicates that morality does not *fundamentally* vary. The research indicates that there is a moral instinct with five-ish different parameters that can vary. Varying the settings on the knobs is variation, but within the same model, not the "useful fictions" that you propose, which doesn't suggest any limit to the malleability of morality.

Yes, it is ironic that color is used as a model, but you are absolutely *not* acknowledging the misunderstanding related to your original statement. Your original statement was that objects could not possess the property "color." Well, when one considers "color" to be a range of reflected wavelengths (as Invictus and I immediately and simultaneously did, and probably most other people would too), then that is a property of the object. The object reflects certain wavelengths whether or not there are humans to perceive or name the range of wavelengths.

Do you consider the previous sentence true or false? I even offered to just leave it at a misunderstanding and drop it, but you can't even acknowledge that your original statement didn't specify color as a *perception* rather than a range of reflected wavelengths, which is the source of the misunderstanding. Is it even possible for you to think through what you read in the ask-a-mathemetician article and realize that it isn't the exact same subject broached in this thread? I (and probably Invictus) can't say "we're wrong", because we're not; because of the ambiguity of your original statement as to what "red" is defined as (wavelengths or subjective perception) we just filled in that blank with what is usually meant and made a correct statement based on that.

In addition to the above I would also suggest that people may value human life over rhino life based on the "Community" parameter of the model in the article, depending on how strong the setting on "Community" is. Community extends to people before rhinos. Yes, the article is theoretical, but the hypotheses are being tested and haven't been falsified. Science!

"I said it indicates that morality does not *fundamentally* vary."

It doesn't indicate anything of the kind. Pinkner is making the argument that all humans have a generic moral sense, much like Chomsky argues that all humans are born with a generic understanding of grammar. But that doesn't mean that Chomsky thinks we all can speak the same language. Furthermore Chomsky's notion of language has been widely debunked, anyway. Ask any speech pathologist of the damage Chomsky did to that field.

"Your original statement was that objects could not possess the property "color.""

Which they cannot.

"Well, when one considers "color" to be a range of reflected wavelengths"

Keep clinging to that when you know damn well, from the 20 or so repetitions of the same point, that I was talking about color as a particular form the reflection of wavelengths takes.

" I (and probably Invictus) can't say "we're wrong", because we're not"

Yes you're wrong. Even your own sources that you cite claim that the distinction between green and red is a product of human brain wiring, and you keep clinging to the arbitrary categorization of wavelengths as if they mean anything outside of human brain wiring. But you cannot admit you are ever wrong, even when you're being super arrogant about a point.

"n addition to the above I would also suggest that people may value human life over rhino life based on the "Community" parameter of the model in the article, depending on how strong the setting on "Community" is. "

That's a whole lot of backpedalling from your original claim, which was that valuing human life above all other life was a *universal human instinct*.

"Varying the settings on the knobs is variation, but within the same model, not the "useful fictions" that you propose, which doesn't suggest any limit to the malleability of morality."

Pinkner is suggesting that in the West, the spheres (which he claims are arbitrarily reduced to five, by the way, this categorization fluctuates and is based on the tastes of the researcher); the spheres of community and authority barely register at all, whereas they are very strong in places like Japan. If that's the case then to claim that morality isn't infinitely malleable is just not true. There are any number of permutations of moral values a culture holds. The idea that all cultures have some kind of generic system of moral values isn't a very insightful point, and does not in any way indicate that moral values are universally held or unmalleable.

Actually Chomsky does think we all speak pretty much the same language:

"Chomsky says that if an alien visited earth, he would observe that all humans speak the same language with only slight variation."

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20101006.pdf

Chomsky's theories have detractors, but it is an exaggeration to say they have been "widely debunked"

When did you state that you were talking about color as "particular form" (I guess you mean "separate from") "the reflection of wavelengths takes" (whatever that means)? Please point to the post, it was never clear to me.

Actually how has Chomsky been "debunked"? Can you provide specifics?

"the distinction between green and red is a product of human brain wiring"

I agree.

BUT... once red is defined as the property of reflecting certain wavelengths, then it is a property an object, which is how Invictus and I interpreted your original statement, and is correct under that interpretation. It is shocking that you actually can't see this from a perspective that is different from your own.

Which... holy shit did you just accuse me of "backpedaling"? Yes, I recalibrated my statement based on new information (actually old information that had gone off a bit in my memory; I had to re-read some things).

It's interesting that you consider "backpedaling" to be a fault, but not a surprise, considering how obstinately you cling to your own bullshit and resort to browbeating instead of adjusting your own thinking.

I don't see where you're getting "infinitely malleable" from, just because some questions can be excluded from the moral sphere (i.e. community and authority turned down to 0). You can't *create* a new moral concern in the model that has been proposed.

"It's interesting that you consider "backpedaling" to be a fault,"

Right, so now, after the point of this whole "discussion" was you browbeating me for valuing non-human life equally to human life, claiming that it was self-evidently true that your ridiculous values were universal human instinct, you're now going to claim that walking back from that is some kind of virtue and that you're so open-minded. Sure, buddy.

"You can't *create* a new moral concern in the model that has been proposed."

I don't know why you're so impressed with taxonomies, as if they prove anything. As Pinkner noted, other people who study this question developed many more categories than just five. The five is arbitrary. You can group things as broadly or narrowly as you want to. The point is different cultures emphasize completely different values. From that I don't see how anybody can conclude that any permutation of morality could remotely be considered 'universal'.

New moral concerns are created all the time. Groups that were previously excluded from human rights consideration, like for instance alternative sexualities, have recently become a protected class, and the same thing has been applied to animals, or any other group hitherto not considered. The environment at large is a relatively new moral concern which doesn't really fit into any of the five spheres very easily. But interpreting the categories broadly enough you can fit any square peg into a round hole.

"Actually how has Chomsky been "debunked"? Can you provide specifics?"

Sure. Read section 5.5.3 on Poverty of the Stimulus.

http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/LIN_106:_UCB_files/Tomasello-BavinChapter09.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/review/language-the-cultural-tool-by-daniel-l-everett.html?pagewanted=all

Well, the Pinkerton quote makes my point for me perfectly. The original claim was that morality is instinctual and that what we view as immoral now was always immoral. I said bull because morality changes with society. Pinkerton confirms that. The basic building blocks behind our moral belief system may be founded in instinct, but the details (our actual morals) vary across societies and time.