Optimorality
...some people say the idea of a Law of Nature is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true... Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him... Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four, but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promises, but if you try breaking a promise to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. (CS Lewis) http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt
I do believe in the Law of Nature, but I think Lewis is disingenuous here. Of course, there are similarities, but there are also great differences. When I think about the Law of Nature, I follow the entirely different line of thought. It comes naturally to me, because this question frequently presents itself when one discusses why we do this and do not do that. Someone will always ask: how is it that cannibalism (just as a typical example) is immoral, if a tiny tribe on a Polynesian atoll or a band of pygmies deep in African jungle find it perfectly normal? I've never understood how am I supposed to answer such questions. When I point that such cannibals constitute only a tiny fraction of humanity, so something must be very wrong with it, I am suspected of intellectual dishonesty. In fact, this is by far the most honest answer I can give.
I've seen my share of functional explanations of complex human behavior (that, say, cannibalism is a taboo because it spreads infectious disease); I do not belive in such rationales. Thousands of species practice cannibalism without adverse effects. I can find twenty objective reasons to make a taboo out of monoculture farming, but there are no such taboos. I can concoct such an "explanation," as it is very easy, but precisely that would be intellectually dishonest.
It is not biology that is working here, it is other laws. These laws are as objective as any biological laws. A human society where cannibalism is a norm is neither viable nor is it competitive. It is a dead end found in isolated refugia, but this is not because something is wrong with cannibalism biologically. The main reason is that the culture of cannibals would not push itself in the directions that the others would naturally pursue. When the two cultures collide, one is at a huge disadvantage, and it becomes extinct. The same process of elimination and evolution that occurs in biology continues on a different plane: the competition of moral systems and the survival of people living by them. What emerges out of this competition is something that is better be obeyed first and questioned second. The exact reasoning explaining how it works can be extremely convoluted, possibly incomprehensible to us, but it was not arrived at by lucid reasoning, but rather through trial and error, as reason cannot comprehend the causes and consequences operating over hundreds and thousands of years. There is only one way of answering what is wrong with a society of cannibals: by looking at such a society over a very long period of time and observing its gradual decline and marginalization.
Furthermore, I do not exclude that nothing is wrong with cannibalism per se. Would it be combined with peculiar ethics and a very odd belief system I cannot fathom myself, maybe it would provide as much viability as did infanticide when it was combined with Chinese ancestral cult, to give one example. But it is the entire edifice that makes our society ticking, and this unique combination is arrived at through much toil and attrition rather than any planning. The property of this optimum is that it works smoothly only in this particular combination.
There is no use to argue that D must be fine, because it works for alien society X, as the only reason it works for X is that X also have A, B, and C - while we have M, N, and Q, which are fundamentally incompatible with D. People do not think through the consequences of having D in combination with M, N, and Q. The question whether D has biological bias is asked in the assumption of everything else remaining the same. But if everything else remains the same, you'd never consider D in the first place, as D emerges on a different trajectory, and most of these evolutionary trajectories lead to gruesome obliteration. People like doing suicidal experiments on themselves, and you can rest assured that D has been tried many times over in the past, and it did not work in all of the combinations that have been tried so far. Even if it works in some rare, unknown combination, you would never arrive at this combination from where you are now by making small steps, as you will be penalized every step of the way while getting out of your local optimum -- until you descend, by chance, enthusiasm, or intuition, into a new combination that works, the new optimum. It is a new, emergent entity, and it comes with a new, emergent law that is locally objective. Disobeying this law is always perilous, for it would not be the optimum otherwise.
We can't pick and chose moral laws from alien cultures or "invent" them: making small changes here and there, one can never arrive at the new combination that works, without paying a very steep price. The "moral higher plane" is a complex landscape: there are many local optima, all guaranteeing some measure of stability, with vast deserts and high ranges separating these optima, with barely felt trenches leading to the next such optimum. Our ancestors found our own optimum by paying enormous price, and they were led to this Canaan by Providence, miracle, or chance, which are different names for the same thing. This is to say that we were very, very lucky.
Is there anything special about it? I do not think this is a relevant question. The biological and physical laws are also likely to be local rather than fundamental; this does not change anything in our lives. All that I know is that tweaking the system in the name of vague perfection is entirely counter-productive. It can be done, but it is waste of time and it can't lead to the desired end. The improvement may well be possible, but it means abandoning our optimum entirely, and a billion strong march through the desert. Nothing at the end of the rainbow is worth this suicidal march. Our optimum will evolve on its own, of its own, and the best we can hope for is guessing the direction of this change rather than directing it anywhere.
If you want to learn what is wrong with cannibalism, go and eat your deceased father, and then try to live with that - here and now - only in this way you will learn the answer, if you really want to know it, which I doubt.
This is the only intellectually honest answer I can provide, sorry.
I do believe in the Law of Nature, but I think Lewis is disingenuous here. Of course, there are similarities, but there are also great differences. When I think about the Law of Nature, I follow the entirely different line of thought. It comes naturally to me, because this question frequently presents itself when one discusses why we do this and do not do that. Someone will always ask: how is it that cannibalism (just as a typical example) is immoral, if a tiny tribe on a Polynesian atoll or a band of pygmies deep in African jungle find it perfectly normal? I've never understood how am I supposed to answer such questions. When I point that such cannibals constitute only a tiny fraction of humanity, so something must be very wrong with it, I am suspected of intellectual dishonesty. In fact, this is by far the most honest answer I can give.
I've seen my share of functional explanations of complex human behavior (that, say, cannibalism is a taboo because it spreads infectious disease); I do not belive in such rationales. Thousands of species practice cannibalism without adverse effects. I can find twenty objective reasons to make a taboo out of monoculture farming, but there are no such taboos. I can concoct such an "explanation," as it is very easy, but precisely that would be intellectually dishonest.
It is not biology that is working here, it is other laws. These laws are as objective as any biological laws. A human society where cannibalism is a norm is neither viable nor is it competitive. It is a dead end found in isolated refugia, but this is not because something is wrong with cannibalism biologically. The main reason is that the culture of cannibals would not push itself in the directions that the others would naturally pursue. When the two cultures collide, one is at a huge disadvantage, and it becomes extinct. The same process of elimination and evolution that occurs in biology continues on a different plane: the competition of moral systems and the survival of people living by them. What emerges out of this competition is something that is better be obeyed first and questioned second. The exact reasoning explaining how it works can be extremely convoluted, possibly incomprehensible to us, but it was not arrived at by lucid reasoning, but rather through trial and error, as reason cannot comprehend the causes and consequences operating over hundreds and thousands of years. There is only one way of answering what is wrong with a society of cannibals: by looking at such a society over a very long period of time and observing its gradual decline and marginalization.
Furthermore, I do not exclude that nothing is wrong with cannibalism per se. Would it be combined with peculiar ethics and a very odd belief system I cannot fathom myself, maybe it would provide as much viability as did infanticide when it was combined with Chinese ancestral cult, to give one example. But it is the entire edifice that makes our society ticking, and this unique combination is arrived at through much toil and attrition rather than any planning. The property of this optimum is that it works smoothly only in this particular combination.
There is no use to argue that D must be fine, because it works for alien society X, as the only reason it works for X is that X also have A, B, and C - while we have M, N, and Q, which are fundamentally incompatible with D. People do not think through the consequences of having D in combination with M, N, and Q. The question whether D has biological bias is asked in the assumption of everything else remaining the same. But if everything else remains the same, you'd never consider D in the first place, as D emerges on a different trajectory, and most of these evolutionary trajectories lead to gruesome obliteration. People like doing suicidal experiments on themselves, and you can rest assured that D has been tried many times over in the past, and it did not work in all of the combinations that have been tried so far. Even if it works in some rare, unknown combination, you would never arrive at this combination from where you are now by making small steps, as you will be penalized every step of the way while getting out of your local optimum -- until you descend, by chance, enthusiasm, or intuition, into a new combination that works, the new optimum. It is a new, emergent entity, and it comes with a new, emergent law that is locally objective. Disobeying this law is always perilous, for it would not be the optimum otherwise.
We can't pick and chose moral laws from alien cultures or "invent" them: making small changes here and there, one can never arrive at the new combination that works, without paying a very steep price. The "moral higher plane" is a complex landscape: there are many local optima, all guaranteeing some measure of stability, with vast deserts and high ranges separating these optima, with barely felt trenches leading to the next such optimum. Our ancestors found our own optimum by paying enormous price, and they were led to this Canaan by Providence, miracle, or chance, which are different names for the same thing. This is to say that we were very, very lucky.
Is there anything special about it? I do not think this is a relevant question. The biological and physical laws are also likely to be local rather than fundamental; this does not change anything in our lives. All that I know is that tweaking the system in the name of vague perfection is entirely counter-productive. It can be done, but it is waste of time and it can't lead to the desired end. The improvement may well be possible, but it means abandoning our optimum entirely, and a billion strong march through the desert. Nothing at the end of the rainbow is worth this suicidal march. Our optimum will evolve on its own, of its own, and the best we can hope for is guessing the direction of this change rather than directing it anywhere.
If you want to learn what is wrong with cannibalism, go and eat your deceased father, and then try to live with that - here and now - only in this way you will learn the answer, if you really want to know it, which I doubt.
This is the only intellectually honest answer I can provide, sorry.