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September 27, 2024

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@ Brain

>> Then if someone has appropriated your name, not innocently but to deceive, I can tell from previous comments associated with your email address which comments come from you, and I'll delete the offending comments because I think it's wrong to impersonate someone like that.<<

To me, it is immaterial what the motive is why others use my [pen] name and you have my email address and also another that might be used occasional.

You could have removed that entrance but You chose not to act upon it.
So be it.
You must have your own reasons for acting as you do.


My initial reaction to his discussion about morality: He seems to be doing two things wrong here:

1. First, his conflating of morality with selflessness. His implied starting point that a morality rooted in self is suspect, and that only selflessness can make for true morality. That's simply not true. I'll go so far as to call it incoherent, nonsensical. A coherent moral framework can only emerge from enlightened self-centeredness.

2. Two, he seems to be making the exact same error that I thought Sapolsky had fallen into. The idea that only (philosophical, and absolute) free will can make for morality. The implicit starting point that deterministic thoughts and actions cannot make for morality; the idea that because both kinds are determined, therefore there is no essential difference, in moral terms, between a Gandhi or a Dalai Lama on one hand, and a Hitler or a Netanyahu on the other. That's completely mistaken; and any system of thought or ethics that takes that as implicit starting point will necessarily end up both misguided and unnecessarily convoluted.


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Those are my first thoughts, basis a quick read of just the main post. Maybe the more detailed PDF might present a more nuanced development of Singh's ideas, that corrects for these. I'll check it out later when I'm free, looks like an interesting read.

My first impressions here are that morality and goodness are just words that express the same thing. I consider the biological organism (which as far as I’m concerned also includes the mind and self structure, along with the other cognitive processes) has several prime motivations, survival being foremost as it covers food, mating, shelter and for us, clothing. I think that for we humans, survival has evolved to include the self or ego in the sense that we protect, our beliefs, opinions and knowledge – and in some instances put such mind/self contents before physical survival.

Depending on the cultures we are brought up in determines our particular moral outlooks. To survive and function within that culture would entail (either consciously or unconsciously) going along with these cultural norms. The source of such morals may stem from religion, society, science etc. though all have their basis in our biological functioning – which as I mentioned includes cognitive processes.

And yes, it does seem that we have moral choices though with any choice they are all predicated on previous information, information inherent in our physical make-up and/or our conditioned mental processes. In this scenario, free will is redundant.

Whatever stance, project or life course we take, all can be understood as emanating from natural sources, often sources we are unaware of.

Good lord, who knew growing Sikh was so similar to growing up Baptist.

Went through Manvir Singh’s full article, just now. Enjoyed reading it, absolutely.

I think I stand by what I’d said earlier; with one more small quibble added now, basis this fuller reading.

Like I’d said, I think his overall thesis is fairly straightforward. It only seems complex, and convoluted, because he starts from premises that aren’t valid, and then painstakingly goes on to examine those incorrect premises. I’ve already spelled that out in my earlier comment, but to repeat, briefly: first, his conflation of morality with selflessness; and two, his implicit assumption, which mirrors Sapolsky, that only (perfect, philosophical) free will can make for morality, so that when he sees one’s moral impulses as drawing from evolutionary and social influences, he starts to question whether that morality is actually moral. In as much as the premises are completely unwarranted, then his confusion is completely unnecessary!


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And the further small quibble would be this: He describes moral action as drawn from social influences as necessarily a superficial thing. I disagree.

In his own words, “The motivations that we find so detestable—moral posturing for social rewards—may, in fact, be the hallmark of moral action.” I think he’s completely, entirely mistaken in thinking that. Certainly one of the ways in which societal influences affect us is by getting us to posture; but where I believe he’s mistaken is in concluding, for no good reason that I can see, that that is the only thing that ever happens.

Let me spell this out using the example he himself uses:

Singh was unable to help his Mentawai colleague financially despite his promise; so that, later on, when that particular need is gone, and he meets him, he still hands him a wad of cash; and, on the Mentawai guy’s asking him why, he replies, in effect “Because I don’t want others to think I’m the sort of guy that reneges on his promises.”

Now that unsparing honesty on his part, and that self-awareness, that’s admirable, certainly. But where Singh is mistaken is where he very clearly implies that that is the only kind of morality possible. It is entirely possible to so internalize the idea of always keeping one’s word that, even if one were the only man left in the world and no one could possibly ever see what one is doing, nevertheless one does the right thing, keeps one’s word in this case. And nor is that abstract hypothesis: I submit that many of us do internalize virtue to that extent, it isn’t some kind of wild outlier, at all.

Now certainly, even this deeper, more solid virtue, if I may call it that, is nevertheless a function of one’s genetics and, more relevant to this discussion, of one’s socialization, certainly. But that it is the result of one’s socialization does not, therefore, mean that that virtue is, as implied, necessarily the superficial surface thing that Singh talks about. You can have that virtue penetrate to one’s very being, and despite having started out as socialization, despite having been the effect of socialization, it nevertheless can go beyond subsequent socialization.

Yeah, so Singh’s wrong on that count. But of course, that’s just a detail. Like I said, a minor quibble.

For the rest, I go by what I’d said originally: this is a straightforward moral position, that Singh arrives at very tortuously only because he starts out with faulty premises that he takes a great deal of time and effort to first dislodge. Which, of course, is fair enough, given that this is an account of his own personal journey on to his present moral convictions.

Yep, an interesting read.

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