You're not following me for the reason religious people generally don't. You'd first need to accept, at least for the sake of argument, that morality is not something humans seek outside themselves but a quality of us, that we can understand as a whole load of 'is's & get right.
I don't make that claim. We are just talking past each other. People can be wrong or right about what they are optimising. Empiricism means we do not decide. There are right and wrong answers.
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You say people can be right or wrong about what they optimize, but then you say emiricism means we can't decide. That would seem to suggest there is some non-empirical basis upon which they are right or wrong, which is my original point. What am I missing?
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The point. People can be right or wrong about whether they are a product of evolution and this is not something they can decide. The truth of the matter is still determined by empirical means. Please don't ask me to go through this again. I'll only be saying the same things.
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I think I get it now. People's evolved moral intuition determines what they optimize over. Accepting the solution to that optimization problem is therefore by definition what is best for them. Do I have that right?
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Not quite but closer. Our consistent aim for wellbeing and lack of suffering indicates human fundamental goals and determines the fundamentals of our morality because thjs is what our empathy, compassion & justice (moral intuitions) lead us to moralise over.
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Rewards are about wellbeing whether material or heavenly. Punishments about suffering whether material or hellish. All human societies and some nonhuman promote kindness, caring, honesty etc. We thrived as a species by looking after each other so this is how our morality works
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But we can get things wrong. Love thy neighbour is consistent with this looking after each other. The Golden rule is too. But what if you beat up your neighbour coz he's not the same religion as you and your morality doesn't extend to him because you see him as bad?
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You've allowed something to get in the way of the golden rule and justified it by something which doesn't work by the golden rule of looking after each other. You didn't increase wellbeing and decrease suffering. You got it wrong
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This is intuitive to me as a secular liberal humanist. Care/harm foundation and goodness coming from humanity. No dissonance. You will have the same intuitions but are likely to see them as coming from outside you. Jesus said love thy neighbour. But you feel this.
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