But the little green men might be less individualistic and have instincts that make their society function better under a monachy.

Real logical!

Anyways, in the real world Dow is up today as is NASDAQ. McDonalds up, MSFT up, and Boeing up.
Death to the revolution, long live the counter-revolutionary wreckers and capitalist running dogs!

Agreed.

Yes, because to be bigger and more powerful they would have had to be more cooperative with potential allies. More conciliatory and less supremacist, so yes to win they would have had to be more moral.

I argue might makes right makes might.

But yep, I accept the correction.

“Human instincts are universal”

That’s a controversial point. It would be more accurate to say that there are some instincts that most humans have. Vomiting when you’re sick, for instance. But not everyone even has such a basic one, due to genetic differences.

And the ‘higher order’ instincts, like sexual reproduction, are not necessarily shared by all. Gays may simply not have that instinct. Fighting for survival? Seems that there is a huge variation in this, some humans give up life much easier than others do.

So trying to define universal objective morality from human instinct is totally flawed. In some cases extreme aggression might be a survival trait, in others it will just end up getting you locked in prison or executed. No real generalizations can be made from evolution to morality *even if* you accept that evolution and instincts lead to ‘objective’ morality (which I don’t).

What a crock of shit from the sugarmeister (Andrew W). Heard of SUICIDE BOMBERS? The foot soldiers of Islam? Keep up the good work, Andrew W, as there is a career for you in academia.

unaha-closp, point 1, “you that stated our instincts are irrelevent to what an objective moral is” I asked how are instincts irrelevent to human morality, I’m arguing that much of human morality is a product of our instincts.

Are you arguing “might is right”? The most successful at expansion and elimination of the competition is the most moral? That success is the automatic product of a higher morality? There is a quote, “the good guys always win, because the winners write the history”.

If that is what you are saying, my reply is that in some situations competition laeds to success, in other situations cooperation leads to success, if the Japanese are economically successful, thats our gain, totally eliminating them at the end of WW2 wouldn’t have been to our gain, elimintaing them as a military threat was.
Also consider that in any conflict size rather than moral codes is the main determinant, if the axis powers had been more powerful than the allies, history would have been different, would that have in made them somehow more moral?

Point 2. Soldiers don’t go to war intending to die for their countries, they go with the intention of making the other side die for theirs, what they dream of is coming home as heros, women like heros.

If soldiers believe they are going to war to die, or if there is little chance of post conflict dividends, their government will need to force them to go to war.

2 points:

First your own – you that stated our instincts are irrelevent to what an objective moral is, that “other intellegent species in [the] universe will have different instincts”. Pointing out that by squaring morals to the higher cause of obtaining power means when ourselves and other intelligences interact it benefits us – a contest of relative power. Their instincts shall be different from ours yet the interaction dynamic is anticipated to be one of relative power, even if our instincts do ask us to create safety it is the moral good to do so anyway.

Second – moral behaviour may run counter to instinctual behaviour. Soldiering is required profession and yet runs directly counter to the survival instincts of those joining.

http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/morality.htm