Teallaura's Baby Blog

Okay, there are a couple problems here. I’ve already refuted a couple of these points and concede on a lot of the rest - but it doesn’t matter because the things I agree with don’t prove your argument. So, a quick recap and then I’ll tackle it point by point:

My thesis is that the idea that numerous, diverse cultures all coming to the exact same conclusion is irrational. If culture is a major defining factor of morality then we should see at least a few outliers coming to the conclusion that murder (malicious killing of a human being) sans caveat (justification) is morally acceptable. We have agreed that no such cultures exist.

We have further agreed that not all cultures behave rationally or in their best self interest. If they did, your case would be made, but the fact that they don’t supports my position.

Originally posted by Chris

The probability of a particular society having a certain moral belief is dependant on the circumstances of that society. For instance, you may find that a society with a lower ratio of males to females may be more likely to find polygamy socially acceptable.

That culture can influence moral behavior/ideology is not in dispute. That culture defines morality is. This shows influence, granted, but does not establish that morality is necessarily defined by culture. Anyone can claim the sun is blue. A culture could inexplicably conclude that the sun must be blue despite not appearing blue. The sun is not influenced by what we think about it, even if all our kids start drawing pictures of blue suns.

But to your point, okay, multiple factors can influence cultural ideas. No prob there.

Originally posted by Chris

So, the probability of a society finding malicious killing without caveat be acceptable is going to be dependant on a lot of factors, too. If this probability is rendered incredibly low from factors that every society has in common then we would expect the total lack of societies which find malicious killing without caveat acceptable.

I’ll grant this - but now you need to establish those factors and show that the probability is indeed so low that the statistical improbability is overcome.

Originally posted by Chris

So, let's look at the factors which are common to every society. Every society is made up of humans (we're talking about humans, here, a debate on animal morality or whatever is not something I want to get into really ) - which is an important factor.

Okay… ( Animal morality? Animals aren’t moral actors…)

Originally posted by Chris

Humans have a lot of things in common. Not wanting to be killed is one of them. For each individual person in a society, not having to face the threat of being murdered every day is an advantage – firstly, it stops them being perpetually fearful for their lives; secondly, it allows them to use the effort they'd otherwise be put into not being killed to do something productive to improve their quality of life and... there are quite a lot of other benefits of not being killed, I would imagine.

This is an individual factor, not a cultural one. I grant sane humans don’t want to be killed - but that would also be true of not wanting to be killed by cars - so why don’t we see streets lined with barriers to keep cars from accidentally running over people? If this is so overwhelming a factor we should see it just as strong in other areas. We do see self-preservation but we don’t see every culture/society regarding personal safety as overriding. To get where you are going, we should see exactly that.

Originally posted by Chris

Another important factor common to basically all humans (short of the truly sociopathic) is that we do possess (and frequently carry out) alturistic actions. We also have the ability to emphasise with people and to understand how our actions will make other people feel. Being murdered, I would imagine, is not a particularly nice feeling. This isn't exactly perfect, though, as we can (obviously) kill, injure or hate – but still something to keep in mind.

It’s a non-issue for our purposes - you need something that makes the probability of a culture accepting murder overwhelmingly low. By your own admission this doesn’t get us there and I’d argue while it might decrease probability somewhat its counterpart, selfishness, cancels that out.

Originally posted by Chris

Humans are also social animals. Firstly in the case that we rely on other humans for our survival (see below) and also that we enjoy (and pretty much require) socialising. Both with friends and romantic/sexual partners.

And people kill loved ones all the time - in fact the likelihood in any murder is that the victim knew the killer and usually had a close or strong relationship with them. We humans can be hurt most deeply by our loved ones and are ironically more likely to kill a loved one than a stranger. This does not reduce the probability of murder being morally acceptable - it does the exact opposite.

Originally posted by Chris

Another feature that societies share is that, in general, they want to stick around. Stability is a inherent goal of any society – this ties in a lot with the “not wanting to be murdered” thing. A stable society benefits everyone in it substantially, as I'm sure you'll agree. A society in which murder was acceptable is not one that's going to stick around for very long.

Um, Chris, I already disproved this. Societies presently exist and are sadly stable that tolerate murder. They do not do so sans caveat, that’s true, because sane human beings require justification for their acts - but my argument is that is because morality is objective. In a morally relative world justification should not be a psychological need - yet we see it in even the most murderous of cultures/societies.

I’m pretty sure Chris accepts the same premise but for the viewing audience ‘justification’ or ‘caveat’ in this instance is not necessarily the same thing as a legitimate justification. Most would accept self-defense as legit justification (and no, self defense isn’t murder, it’s just the easiest example) but would not accept stealing the victim’s shoes as just cause.

Originally posted by Chris

One other important similarity of the vast majority of societies is the division of labour. The fact that people rely on other members of the society to do jobs (for instance, I rely on the people who purify my water or make my food) is important. You have to trust other people – not only to perform their job well but also to not just run away with your money. The benefits of allowing division of labour to occur are obvious – imagine a society, though, in which murder was considered acceptable – it'd be hard to ensure that that baker you just gave a load of flour to would be around tomorrow for you to pick up your bread and then everyone loses.

This is your best argument and it’s pretty good. But it rests on the false assumption that all cultures will act in their own best self -interest (that they will be rational). Nazi Germany self-destructed because it turned on a segment of its own population. The examples of repressive and oppressive cultures are numerous. Such cultures can be stable and survive long periods. They also use the repressed/persecuted elements as labor - often involved in agriculture. Can you think of a better way to poison people than to be harvesting and processing - even cooking - their food? Trust isn’t what keeps the oppressors safe - terror is. So to can less discriminately murderous cultures develop along ‘mutual self-interests’ to either police laborers or insulate themselves. Yes, it means subcultures develop but virtually all cultures have subcultures so that isn’t a problem for my argument.

I grant that in a rational society this factor does indeed reduce the probability of murder being regarded as acceptable - but since my contention all along has been that most cultures would not regard murder as acceptable even in a morally relative world this does not defeat my argument. I do not agree that this would reduce the probability sufficiently low such that we would see no outliers - I explained why above.

Originally posted by Chris

While it is true that there have been thousands of societies throughout history, the probability of one emerging (and surviving for more than five minutes) in which murder is acceptable is incredibly low. It is entirely possible – and I would argue probable - that we could see all of the societies that have ever existed finding murder to be morally unacceptable, even when the morality is dependant on the society.

This is demonstrably false - South America. Surprisingly stable, yet volatile and with astronomically high murder/violence rates.

Originally posted by Chris

I'd also like to note that societies aren't really ever in a vacuum. The people in them come from other societies (possibly previous ones) and were brought up and taught in various ways. They have neighbours which they might trade with...

Granted, but again it really doesn’t reduce the probability that much.

Even with the points I’ve granted would reduce the probability combined, there is not enough here to reduce probability that low given that we see counter examples in most of those cases. Granted they aren’t perfect (they all function with caveat) but they don’t need to be. You now need to show why caveat would affect the probabilities sufficiently - otherwise, the counter examples disprove the points and thereby the thesis.