From: J. Eric Mortensen (eric@episteme.no)
Date: Mon Mar 01 1999 - 12:00:47 MST
>Sounds interesting, Eric. Please show me how this would proscribe murder and
>theft.
>
>Thanks for great thinking,
>Adrian
Thanks, Adrian, but most of it is not really my own.
For example, there's a short but great essay on the objectivity of morality at
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/moralfac.htm.
It says (in a less formal way) the same thing that studies in complexity theory/game theory
say on the issue.
The basic idea, and I agree with it, is that people who kill and steal are generally that kind
of people who kill and steal regularly. In other words, if you observe a
person murdering another person, then you will predict that he is dangerous.
Your evaluations of his actions are based on objective fact (his murdering
another person). Those evaluations are moral evaluations. Since most (all) people
will predict that a murderer is dangerous, norms (of necessity) evolve that regard
murder as evil. Such norms eventually get codified as laws. Laws are therefore natural laws,
i.e., they follow to a large extent from the nature of humans.
An implication is that they are basically the same across societies (note that this is an experimentally testable proposition, although I don't know if it ever has been. I think that
such an experiment would conclude that yes, most societies would
statistically have very similar laws against murder, theft, kidnapping etc.)
Regards,
Eric
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