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Originally posted by Starlight
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People can be referring to quite a few different things when they talk about 'morality'.
What I am thinking of here is that interpersonal interactions can be measured for their levels of benevolence or malevolence. If I kill someone because I hate them, that is an interpersonal interaction performed out of negative intentions. If I help an old lady across the street out of concern for her safety and well-being, that is an interpersonal interaction performed out of positive intentions. What characterizes the difference is the level of value placed on the other person in the interaction (be it a positive value, perhaps a strongly positive one, a negative value, perhaps strongly negative, or no value at all). All interactions performed by intentioned agents are subject to potential evaluations of this kind (i.e. the question of what intention(s) an agent performing an action has, always has a true answer).
Humans instinctively try to evaluate the motives of others around them all the time, both because it is socially useful to understand other people, and because it has been evolutionarily hard-wired into us to detect potential threats and/or sources of assistance. So any human group or society as a whole is constantly making these sorts of assessments of its members and trying to evaluate the positive and negative intentions toward others that are behind the actions. Most socially created laws and explicit codes of conduct necessarily have this underlying them to some degree or another, as obviously any society where members are trying to harm one another constantly will quickly self-destruct, while societies that encourage mutual benevolent behavior will prosper.
Obviously when a person uses the English word "morality" they might simply be referring to the general concept of "what is considered socially acceptable in a particular society", as Tassman often does, which naturally varies by society to a significant extent although it typically has a strong degree of overlap since the above-discussed principles ultimately always underlie it (so phrases like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" appear in numerous societies across time and space since that is a way of saying to place a positive value on others and act with positive intentions toward them). But when I speak of a mathematical-like objective morality, I am referring to the above outlined view that all interpersonal interactions can be assessed for positive/negative intentions, and that can always be done regardless of the particular society or socially accepted code of conduct, and seems to always be a relevant and interesting thing to assess.
As far as your particular questions A and B go, those fall outside of areas that can be assessed directly for positive/negative intentions towards others. It would be a matter of considering many, many factors and coming to some sort of widespread agreement as to the best balance. (In case it wasn't clear in my description, an act can obviously be performed with multiple intentions and so there can be plenty of gray areas where some intentions are positive and others negative, or where the actor positively values some people and negatively values others, or where they are making a judgment call in an effort to balance competing concerns with regard to the well-being of multiple people).
What I am thinking of here is that interpersonal interactions can be measured for their levels of benevolence or malevolence. If I kill someone because I hate them, that is an interpersonal interaction performed out of negative intentions. If I help an old lady across the street out of concern for her safety and well-being, that is an interpersonal interaction performed out of positive intentions. What characterizes the difference is the level of value placed on the other person in the interaction (be it a positive value, perhaps a strongly positive one, a negative value, perhaps strongly negative, or no value at all). All interactions performed by intentioned agents are subject to potential evaluations of this kind (i.e. the question of what intention(s) an agent performing an action has, always has a true answer).
Humans instinctively try to evaluate the motives of others around them all the time, both because it is socially useful to understand other people, and because it has been evolutionarily hard-wired into us to detect potential threats and/or sources of assistance. So any human group or society as a whole is constantly making these sorts of assessments of its members and trying to evaluate the positive and negative intentions toward others that are behind the actions. Most socially created laws and explicit codes of conduct necessarily have this underlying them to some degree or another, as obviously any society where members are trying to harm one another constantly will quickly self-destruct, while societies that encourage mutual benevolent behavior will prosper.
Obviously when a person uses the English word "morality" they might simply be referring to the general concept of "what is considered socially acceptable in a particular society", as Tassman often does, which naturally varies by society to a significant extent although it typically has a strong degree of overlap since the above-discussed principles ultimately always underlie it (so phrases like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" appear in numerous societies across time and space since that is a way of saying to place a positive value on others and act with positive intentions toward them). But when I speak of a mathematical-like objective morality, I am referring to the above outlined view that all interpersonal interactions can be assessed for positive/negative intentions, and that can always be done regardless of the particular society or socially accepted code of conduct, and seems to always be a relevant and interesting thing to assess.
As far as your particular questions A and B go, those fall outside of areas that can be assessed directly for positive/negative intentions towards others. It would be a matter of considering many, many factors and coming to some sort of widespread agreement as to the best balance. (In case it wasn't clear in my description, an act can obviously be performed with multiple intentions and so there can be plenty of gray areas where some intentions are positive and others negative, or where the actor positively values some people and negatively values others, or where they are making a judgment call in an effort to balance competing concerns with regard to the well-being of multiple people).
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