From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Re: Moral propagationism
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 06:56:43 GMT

>In article 24239@techbook.com, szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:
>>Moral propagationism says,
>>that system [1] is most moral which can most widely propagate itself.
>>
>>Proof by induction:
>>Base case: A moral system that cannot survive will not exist, and
>>	therefore will not provide moral guidance, therefore cannot
>>	be moral in any meaningful definition of the word
>>Step: A moral system that propagates more widely than another has
>>	(all other things being equal) a greater chance for ongoing
>>	survival.  It provides moral guidance to more people, and 
>>	ultimately more success for the memes that are symbiotic 
>>	with it (the society in general).
>>
In article <lc3rtlINNjui@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM writes:
>
>Interesting idea. But why is it necessary to a have a hierarchy of
>morality with one morality deemed more moral?

Morality is a guide for behavior, the way we judge which 
behaviors are best.  To have that guide we must choose which morality
is the best.  Moral propagationism provides a rational means for
making such a choice, a meta-morality.

[1]: This needs clarification: "system" should read "moral system" 
or, more succinctly, "morality".  That make the conclusion semantically 
consistent with the proof; it's a vast over-generalization to apply it
to all systems.

>We do not 
>speak of beetles being more "genetic" because there are more types of
>beetles in the world than anything else and would likely survive a
>nuclear war...
>If a species goes extinct we make no moral judgement about its fitness 
>concluding only that it could no longer fulfill its niche. Why not that 
>same for moral systems?

Biologists do speak of fitness functions, but they are not moral
judgements.  Moral propagationism only applies to moralities, sorry for 
any confusion my wording might have caused.  We might very well value a 
genetic code for other reasons, though; and the ultimate bases for such value 
judgements are moralities.  We wouldn't judge the genes themselves 
as moral or not; we would judge our behavior as it relates to those genes -- 
eg should we breed these animals?  Should we allow those to go extinct, or 
sacrifice to save them?  The correct judgement is that which would
optimize its own propagation, keeping in mind the context of the entire 
morality.  Judging our influence on the existence, survival, propagation, 
use, etc. of genes or anything else is only relevant as it relates to the 
propagation of moralities.

A more important question: should we make humans extinct?
Surprisingly, there exist people who would say "yes".  Moral
propagationism says that human extinction would be OK if it
more widely propagated the morality specifying that behavior;
but since moral systems propagate through human minds a morality
that dictated their extinction would be self-exterminating,
or immoral.


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