Sounds like you just laid out the “Bush Doctrine.”

You always focus incisively on the heart of the matter.

There are plenty of people who subscribe to a different philosophy. For them, they can live a happy life only if they can dominate you and me. They do not subscribe to our notion of reciprocity. Quite the contrary, they hold that “might is right,” which is why they seek power over all other things. Indeed, this group has more influence than any other group because they make it a life-long pursuit to gain that very power that they lust after.

Yes, there are such people. There always have been. They existed when the prevailing cultures were religious and they asserted themselves more recently through avowedly atheistic ideologies.

Although it has not been a necessary precondition, a common theme amongst both groups has been justifying their actions as being carried out in pursuit of some supreme or ultimate Truth, whether it be Holy Mother Church or Allah or National Socialism or the Marxist State or even Manifest Destiny.

You tend not to find such attitudes succeeding where the rights of the individual are established and upheld as being equal or superior to those of the state or any religious or political bloc.

Since you cannot tell them that they are violating the inherent dignity of the human person, or the natural moral law, or any other objective standard, you are out of options and headed for slavery.

On the contrary, we can argue that any form of authority that tries to impose itself without the consent of the population it seeks to govern is illegitimate.

Need I remind you that in 1776 the American colonists fought a war based on that very principle; they then went on to enshrine that principle in a constitution which is notable for its establishment of the principle of individual rights and democratic government which stand in their own right. They need no justification by or permission from some other supreme authority.

You cannot build a well ordered society around your wishes or even the sum total of all of societies wishes. You can only build a well ordered society around moral truths that put conditions on everyone’s wishes, including those whose wish is to deny your wishes.

That depends on how well-ordered you want a well-ordered society to be. The rigidly-disciplined societies of seventeenth-century Puritans or twentieth century communist regimes were well-ordered on the surface, but I would argue that it was a facade. It was only achieved by suppressing basic human nature.

It is significant that, in England, the Puritans were popular initially because they broke the power of the monarch and the aristocracy in the English Civil War. They became less than popular and eventually fell out of favor when it became apparent that the oppression of the King was being replaced by the oppression of a particularly narrow, rigid and doctrinaire version of Christian belief.

Human nature is human nature and will not be repressed for long. Societies which recognize and allow for that may appear to be messy and disorganized but is that really worse than the alternative?

There are plenty of people who subscribe to a different philosophy. For them, they can live a happy life only if they can dominate you and me. They do not subscribe to our notion of reciprocity. Quite the contrary, they hold that “might is right,” which is why they seek power over all other things. Indeed, this group has more influence than any other group because they make it a life-long pursuit to gain that very power that they lust after. You say, “let’s all just get along.” They say, “let’s not. I would prefer that you be my slave. You say, “I prefer to scratch your back while you scratch my back.” They say, “I prefer to keep you in chains.’

Since you cannot tell them that they are violating the inherent dignity of the human person, or the natural moral law, or any other objective standard, you are out of options and headed for slavery. You cannot build a well ordered society around your wishes or even the sum total of all of societies wishes. You can only build a well ordered society around moral truths that put conditions on everyone’s wishes, including those whose wish is to deny your wishes.

But of course all of this presupposes that things like obligations should be respected, that is, that respect and mutual agreement should be protected and respected because they are already the right thing to do.

I see it as a conditional rather than an imperative morality. Rather than what is right being decreed by some sort of supreme moral authority, it is an argument which runs: if you want a better chance of a long and happy life then you should respect the same wish in others.

Our moral beliefs may not be far apart. Where we differ is over the authority or justification for those beliefs. I see no reason to assume the existence of a god or that moral codes can have any objective existence in any meaningful sense. The moral codes that undoubtedly do exist have arisen as conventions in human cultures. This does not make them any less valid just as being enshrined in scripture doesn’t make them any more valid.

I prefer to call it pragmatic. If I want other people in society to respect my interests then I must, in turn, respect theirs. It is a simple exercise of the Golden Rule or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.

The obverse of that principle, of course, is acting selfishly without any consideration for others. However, if someone behaved like that towards me then I would regard myself as being released from any obligation to respect that persons interests. The problem with that is how long do you think any society would last if all of its members behaved like that?

But of course all of this presupposes that things like obligations should be respected, that is, that respect and mutual agreement should be protected and respected because they are already the right thing to do.

This means that your system presupposes morality. And secondly, by your system, there is no reason to respect pragmatism. Chaos works just as well for any end as any other, for no end would be objectively better than any other, including pragmatism and survival. There is no “goodness” even in survival, there is only desire, but of course desire means things that are morally wrong too. But if there are no differences between desires, then there is no reason to prefer one to any other other than another desire. When all that says “it is good” is gone, that which says “I want” remains. And morality will not and cannot be built on those grounds. All of your messages to me presuppose a real morality, a real duty to others, whether you call it pragmatism or shared interests.

Why should anyone care about another persons common interest or even their own? This has to be maintained only and solely on the grounds that it is “right” to consider another person’s interest, so you’re using objective morality in the first degree to justify all other moral actions to that principle of shared interests.

I prefer to call it pragmatic. If I want other people in society to respect my interests then I must, in turn, respect theirs. It is a simple exercise of the Golden Rule or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.

The obverse of that principle, of course, is acting selfishly without any consideration for others. However, if someone behaved like that towards me then I would regard myself as being released from any obligation to respect that persons interests. The problem with that is how long do you think any society would last if all of its members behaved like that?

And secondly, things are of mutual interest only because they are right, not because they are of interest. They are of “interest” because we are interested in what is right, and to argue the other way around is to beg the question.

I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by interest because it has nothing to do with ‘right’.

My most fundamental interest is to live as long as I can or, at least, for as long as I retain some capacity to enjoy life. Whether or not this is “right” or even rational is irrelevant to me. It is what I want and I make no apologies for it.

Like everyone else here, I will die sooner or later of something. There appears to be no way to avoid that. All I can do is to minimize those risks over which I have some influence. One of those risks is from other people: people who might view me as a threat, people who might compete with me for scarce resources, people who might just take a dislike to me. If I can ameliorate that threat to my survival by joining a society in which all members agree not to harm others in order to prevent harm being done to themselves then, to me, it makes good sense to do so.

In that way, simple self-interest could lead to the complex moralities we see today. As I said, collective not objective.

First things first, Seversky, first things first. Morality is the first principle in which all interests are built upon. Morality is always the premise, never the conclusion.

The naturalistic fallacy lies in arguing that we can derive any moral lessons from observing the way the Universe is. I am a miniscule part of that Universe and I want to survive for as long as I can. There is nothing in the way the Universe is to say that I should or should not survive. It is supremely indifferent to the question as far as we can see. In that case, why shouldn’t my desire to survive be its own justification or, rather, does it need any justification at all?

Bringing a deity like the Christian God into it is no use either. It would be just another intelligent agent expressing an opinion. What reason do we have for thinking that a god’s morality is any better-founded than our own?

No, I was just providing a practical example of a professional person who claimed that it helped him.

—”As a general matter, I think it is feasible to use reverse engineering even if the object to be reverse engineered has arisen without intelligent input.”

I think if something was designed, it would reveal more about the way it was constructed than if it wasn’t designed, even assuming that some well functioning thing has ever been constructed without a design, which has never been shown to happen.

—”At least that’s what I take from the description of reverse engineering copied in (from the dreaded Wikipedia) below.”

Wikipedia has designophobia.