Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation… What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t.
-Stephen Hawking
A world without ethics or morality comes only in the set of realities without conscious agents or in the set of null universes. A world comprised of matter and energy, or information, and potential, with conscious agents. One with implied pasts and potential futures.
No light, no ought, agency births ethics. Thus, the tale of the tribe: theology failed; no magic. A discipline of primitive eras and peoples — “primitive” meaning original — best set in the field of anthropology and archaeology now.
A verisimilitude to knowledge without the authenticity of actuality. A propinquity to materiality without substantive veracity. A claim to truth for a species in its youth. A “more convincing explanation” exists in the present situation.
Some approximation to the principles of ‘the mind of God’ without a god, as such. The set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes. Therefore, existence becomes statistically favoured more than non-existence.
With this, the statistical existence argument to a set of realities including time because more universes with a large finite number of moments exist than a set of realities with only one moment. Hence, a statistical argument for temporality on top of the statistical argument for existence.
Time as manifest in the Arrow of Time. ‘Old archaeological digs’ find arguments for a transcendent and immanent object. A source of The Good, an assertion of an extranatural atemporal, and natural immanent, entity as the source of ethics or morality. Theology failed to deliver.
One traditional partition in ethics comes from the Humean formulation of is/ought. Facts of the world versus actions in the world. A possible way forward of the is/ought solution sits in temporal statistical unavoidability or the inevitability of time in statistical considerations. Time implies sequences. Thus, the inescapable fact of consequences in a reality with time.
Another possible partial solution comes from the bifurcation of realities. Consider for the moment, two sets of realities exist. One without conscious information processors. Another with them. In the first, no ethics because no conscious action. In the second, morality exists because of conscious action.
Morality may define principles governing behaviour or the conducting of an activity. If morality/ethics define as “principles governing behaviour or the conducting of an activity,” then ethics/morality become inevitable in the second set of realities. Because actions occur through conscious information processors.
Both sets of realities inevitably include time. Only one incorporates conscious information processors. In the only set incorporative of conscious information processors, time and morality become inevitable, statistically, as with existence. We come to the stream of statistical inevitabilities with statistical arguments for existence, temporality, agency, and morality.
If the set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes, then existence becomes statistically more probable. If existence becomes statistically more probable, then realities with more than one moment of time become statistically more probable than realities with only one moment of time.
If realities with more than one moment become statistically more probable than realities with only one moment of time, then one set will evolve conscious information processors and one set will not.
If conscious information processors evolve in one set of universes, and if morality/ethics define as “principles governing behaviour or conducting of an activity,” then evolving conscious information processors creates morality/ethics, because conscious information processors cerebrate/move or conduct activities.
If evolving conscious information processors creates morality/ethics, then ethics/morality becomes statistically inevitable in one set of universes. Thus, if the set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes, then ethics/morality becomes statistically inevitable in one set of universes.
The statistically probable occurrence of existence, of time, of agency, of ethics. If negated at any stage, the argument fails. If no existence, then no time, no agency, and no ethics; if existence and no time, then no agency and no ethics; if existence, time, and no agency, then no ethics; if existence, time, and agency, then ethics.
Ethics comes from agency. Agency comes from time. Time comes from existence. Existence separates from non-existence more likely than not. Is/ought remains preserved as separate ideas, but become coupled together.
Any act contains moral content without morality as an extranatural occurrence or with an implied metaphysical content. Natural informational processes evolve the organism with the structures generating both the interior landscape, the mind, and the exterior framework, the body.
Nothing extranatural invoked as, for example, brains produce valuations of entities, objects, abstractions, and relations between them. An error comes from the claim of ethical values or moral claims as metaphysical or supernatural. In fact, this adds nothing.
Natural structures construct relations between structures as facts of the world. Internal agents to the natural structures, as relations between structures themselves, create internalized frameworks for entities, objects, abstractions, and relations between them. All internalized frameworks come from within the system and/or relate to the system.
No metaphysics, only the natural present there. Hence, the reason for the failure of theology – logical missteps, and the creative formulation of unnecessary/false premises and without proper accounts for required hidden premises.
Otherwise, we can claim abstractions manifested in the information processing within the digital computation system count as metaphysical operators because of computation/valuation in the universe.
It posits more than necessitated and ignores the obvious. Evolved organisms exist in time processing information while giving value to things in reality. Where, an act in the world becomes something of factual content, as contained in reality.
While, the factual content implies moral content because ethics/morality defines as “principles governing behaviour or conducting of an activity.” These acts come coupled with ethical content because of agency.
If a conscious information processor exists in a reality, then morality/ethics becomes unavoidable because the “conscious information processor” must deal with itself and its environment (if only one entity in the universe), or must deal with itself, others, and its environment (if more than one entity in the universe).
The distinction between is/ought comes with the preservation of the separation in one sense, where the individual ideas exist as substantive and legitimate in their own right. Further, though, they, in fact, must give one from the other.
Thus, we can communicate meaning in terms of factual morality, not moral facts. As above, ethics/morals are unavoidable for any reality with at least one conscious information processor. Time, at our scales, appears completely unavoidable, so consequences of “behaviour” in an environment seem inevitable.
Whether actions in reality to oneself, to its environment, or to others, ethics comes with agency. Only one conscious information processor required in the universe.
A reality exists first with facts as pieces of the real world, then an agent, whether knowing or not, enacts mentation and action, which, by definition, impart moral content. Those two together make ethics unavoidable, so any facts must inform our ethics or morality.
Because ethics amounts to the conducting of an activity with activities relevant to conscious information processing systems and time implied in both the known physics of the universe at the scales of the conscious information processing agents, and in the sense of the agents existing and “processing.”
A macro world with the Arrow of Time means statistically linked moments with directionality. A world of conscious information processors (with physical exteriors, frames) creates actions in the world, even mentation can mean action in the world.
Both mean a time sense with moments providing a range of possible moments while harbouring a set of implied pasts based on each instantiation of moments. The only issue seems as if whether the conscious information processor becomes aware of the enactment of the ethic, or not, but there exists a moral value set enacted regardless, unavoidably.
Ethics requires the conscious information processing system, while without the necessity for sufficient awareness within the conscious information processing system for a systematic comprehension of the morality/ethics of the mentation and actions in the world.
Therefore, if ethics (actions in the world) are unavoidable with a conscious information processor (or conscious information processors), and if a conscious information processor exists on a magnitude in which the Arrow of Time exists inevitably, then any facts about reality impinging on a conscious information processor (or conscious information processors) and its environment (their environment and one another) have ethical consequences; everything factual to agency implies the moral, but the “everything” is statistical, because existence statistically exists.