[ExI] Morality function, self-correcting moral systems?

Tomasz Rola rtomek at ceti.pl
Wed Dec 14 20:53:45 UTC 2011


On Wed, 14 Dec 2011, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> True "immoralism" is pretty rare occurrence, and I can hardly see how it
> could apply to a society as such...

I didn't mean anything in humanistic/religious/ethical (HRE) sense.

I am thinking if it is possible to define some "morality function", or 
M-function, that would take some args (like, structure description - a 
structure can be a society, too) and give some numbers in return.

It seems, indeed, that (HRE)-immoral structures (immoral in HRE sense) 
don't survive for too long. I don't want to speculate about reasons, I 
didn't grok it yet.

Perhaps it would be possible to analyse this if one could have M-function 
defined. This would give some hints about (M)-immorality (immorality in 
mathematical sense).

(M)-immorality has not much in common with (HRE)-immorality. What we 
consider to be moral, can be considered something else 500 years from now, 
just like slavery is looked upon nowadays. Homosexualism was (HRE)-immoral 
once, seems to be (HRE)-neutral in some circles, can be (HRE)-moral one 
day. Truth telling is (HRE)-immoral always+everywhere, I would say, at 
least as long as humans are involved.

Personally I don't have to care what will be (HRE)-moral in the future. I 
am interested in (M)-morality, because it is something new to me (I've 
stepped on it with my wandering mind, that's it).

Maybe I can draw some fine picture about the concept, or maybe not. For 
now, I just try to make my mind about what I have stepped on, actually.

So, for now, (HRE)-morality is something relative, and society always is 
(HRE)-moral for at least some of its members. It doesn't prevent it from 
being (M)-immoral, however.

What exactly does it mean, to be (M)-im/moral, I am unable say at the 
moment :-). But it is more about engineering society than about public 
opinion about politicians or wars or sexual (mis)behaviours or eating 
your dead/alive family members.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **



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