Morality is About Relationships

[coberst]

Morality is About Relationships

I suspect that most of us are willing to agree that, broadly speaking, we have ‘fact knowledge’ and ‘relationship knowledge’. I would like to take this a step further by saying that I wish to claim that fact knowledge is mono-logical and relationship knowledge is multi-logical.

Mono-logical matters have one set of principles guiding their solution. Often these mono-logical matters have a paradigm. The natural sciences—normal sciences—as Thomas Kuhn labels it in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” move forward in a “successive transition from one paradigm to another”. A paradigm defines the theory, rules and standards of practice. “In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possible pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant.”

Multi-logical problems are different in kind from mono-logical matters.

Socratic dialogue is one technique for attempting to grapple with multi-logical problems; problems that are either not pattern like or that the pattern is too complex to ascertain. Most problems that we face in our daily life are such multi-logical in nature. Simple problems that occur daily in family life are examples. Each member of the family has a different point of view with differing needs and desires. Most of the problems we constantly face are not readily solved by mathematics because they are not pattern specific and are multi-logical.

Dialogue is a technique for mutual consideration of such problems wherein solutions grow in a dialectical manner. Through dialogue each individual brings his/her point of view to the fore by proposing solutions constructed around their specific view. All participants in the dialogue come at the solution from the logic of their views. The solution builds dialectically i.e. a thesis is developed and from this thesis and a contrasting antithesis is constructed a synthesis that takes into consideration both proposals. From this a new synthesis a new thesis is developed.

When we are dealing with mono-logical problems well circumscribed by algorithms the personal biases of the subject are of small concern. In multi-logical problems, without the advantage of paradigms and algorithms, the biases of the problem solvers become a serious source of error. One important task of dialogue is to illuminate these prejudices which may be quite subtle and often out of consciousness of the participant holding them.

Our society is very good while dealing with mono-logical problems. Our society is terrible while dealing with multi-logical problems.

Do you not think that we desperately need to understand CT, which attempts to help us understand how to think about multi-logical problems? Do you not think that it is worth while for every adult to get up off their ‘intellectual couch’ and teach themselves CT?

[Steve Davis]

Morality is certainly about relationships, but morals were initially a social tool for enhancing group fitness. The word is derived from, or has the same root as mores, being social rules, etiquette, or prohibitions. Any action by an individual that threatened group cohesion and balance was considered immoral. This was society's way of dealing with multi-logical problems, so it's not quite as "terrible" as the article suggests.

[HydrogenBond]

One can analyze the multi-logic of morality in a general way.

Morality tries to enhance group fitness. These moral group laws can be rational or irrational. Individual choices are more variable and can enhance group fitness or can cause group fitness to degenerate. The personal morality can also be rational and irrational. Personal morality can copy the group morality, parts of the group, or be totally individual. It can be a blend of rational and irrational. This gives us four basic combinations relative to morality of group-individual dynamics; rational-rational, rational-irrational, irrational-rational, irrational-irrational.

There is rational group morality that maintains groups fitness. For example, killing is usually considered immoral because if it was presented as an option for individual free choice (remove the immoral association) group fitness would degenerate as more people kill each other with irrational whims, impulses and logical premeditation. This is rational morality since we could run an experiment and the result would be predictable in terms of group fitness. Most rational people can see the logic in this, without an experiment, and will include this rational morality into their individual morality to get rational-rational.

There is irrational group morality that helps maintains group fitness, even against rational free choice. One example is the control of language, such as swearing and four letter words. These words affect some people at an irrational or conditioned level even though the audio noise does no physical harm. Unlike the killing example, based on physical affect, this is subjective cause and affect. Most people see this flaw in human nature and reason we may need to protect the two groups of irrational people from themselves. This last choice could be irrational-rational morality.

Lying is considered immoral. This is rational morality, since communication presents data points, with the truth, valid reality data points. Lying would add bad data or made up data points to intellectual curves. It can make people detach from reality, which could affect group fitness. If lying was done in science, the functional impact would be obvious when these new curves are used for practical applications. Individual free choice may benefit by adding bad data to truth curves. This would be rational-irrational.

White lies are not always considered immoral, based on group subjective morality. If the truth can hurt, sometimes adding bad data points makes a new subjective curve that makes people feel better and improves group adhesion. This is good irrational-irrational morality.