re: Objective morality (Was: Re: Moral behavior of SIs)

From: J. Eric Mortensen (eric@episteme.no)
Date: Fri Feb 26 1999 - 11:44:38 MST


>From: ASpidle@aol.com <ASpidle@aol.com>

>Great thinking Eric!! Don't you think it's time to develop a more
appropriate
>moral code that all intelligent beings could sign on to??

What about this shot at an objective morality?

Metamorality: Morality is by definition good. For morality to exist, there
has to be something. Morality cannot exist in nothing. Before the big bang
there was no universe, thus no morality.

I think I disagree. Before there was sentient life, there was no morality.
Morality makes no sense (as a system to support our decision-making) without
a self-reflective ability to choose between yes and no, should and should not.
Life which does not have this ability is simply following its blind genetic coding.

Morality: Anything that makes the universe exist longer and fights the
entropy is moral. The highest form of morality is whatever increases
extropy.

But isn't this an arbitrary definition (ie., non-objective?).
Why should we think that it is a good definition? How does it help us
predict human behavior?

Couldn't it be as simple as that?

Things are never that simple :-)

Regards,
Eric

J. Eric Mortensen, eric@episteme.no

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