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Rau
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Bradski, I left a question for u in post #270.
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Bradski
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Not ‘we’, Rau. I mean which person. Because prayers are answered differently depending on who is asking them. Both sides in a lot of conflicts believe God is on their side. ‘Got mit uns’ versus ‘In God We Trust’. How do we know who is right?
Who has God’s ear? Who has the hot line to heaven? Whom should we trust to have the answer?
Notwithstanding that morality is often a question of degree. Is it OK to cut down that one tree? A thousand? Is it OK to deforest a whole region? Isn’t that immoral? Hang on, Rau is going to check with God as to exactly what number of trees is acceptable to remove before it becomes an immoral act.
What nonsense…
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Rau
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God has spoken, in person and through his church! He says you may not kill innocents, notwithstanding your view of consequences.
I note that Pallas’ answer to my question was clear and definitive. In his system, it is not only acceptable, but it is morally obligatory to murder a few innocents if that is expected to save a greater number. In fact, in his system, one would be morally culpable for failing to do the murder. I’m no philosopher, but it may well be that only God’s law says otherwise.
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Rau
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I find your tone offensive.
No system of morality eliminates the need for prudential judgement.
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Bradski
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I mean no offense. It is not given, so I cannot be responsible if it is taken.
Pretty much exactly what I have been arguing. Although perhaps you have just quoted from the other side of the same coin.
So if no system of morality eliminates the need for prudential judgement then it is an integral part of the system itself. If you want to say that any answer we reach (using prudential judgement) also, in your opinion, aligns with what God wants, then be my guest. I’m sure (in fact I am certain) that others will say that it isn’t what God wants, but I will leave you to argue that with them.
In regard to your specific prudential judgment (which you would have to bring to bear on any given problem because ‘no system of morality eliminates the need for prudential judgment’), there are two possible outcomes.
Firstly, you know what God wants but your judgment does not align with it. I can’t see you claiming that your judgment is better than God’s so we are left with the second outcome. Which is that your judgment always aligns with what God wants. In which case you have the answer to all moral problems.
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Rau
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No, you frame the situation poorly.
First, I do my best to apply God’s law - no prudential judgement needed. Often this will clearly preclude me doing wrong - eg. I will not set out to murder innocents, no matter the motivation. And for the myriad of decisions I make in a day, I exercise my judgement. Yes, prudential judgement is evidently a part, but not the whole, of the system used to guide our choices.
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Bradski
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Then can you tell me if the decisions you make, exercising prudential judgment, are what God wants you to do? Because there are Christians who will tell you that God says something entirely opposite. Both sides in any conflict may declare that God is on their side. They have entered into the fray almost certainly using your prudential judgment yet with entirely opposing views on what is the right thing to do and both declaring that it is what God wants.
They obviously can’t both be right so obviously we have a situation whereby someone who says X is what God wants is wrong. How do we tell what God wants if people, in good faith, both say they know what it is and they are diametrically opposed to each other?
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Pallas_Athene
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Apart from the usage of the word “moral”, I agree with you. The better phrase is the “lesser of two evils”. It might happen that we are left with two unpalatable choices. In such a case I would always choose the one which causes less harm. Remember the old “trolley problem”. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
I am aware that one choice requires ACTIVE intrusion into the system, while the other one is a PASSIVE allowing to let things happen as they may. I am also aware that most theists would choose the PASSIVE inaction, and then use the “defense” of Ponte Pilate… “I did not do it, don’t blame me”. Well, I would blame you (or God) for inaction. In my system to actively causing harm, or passively allowing harm are indistinguishable.
No, he did NOT. The “silentium Dei” is almost deafening.
The point is that you have no access to God’s law. Maybe you are right, or maybe you are wrong.
As it has come up in several threads, God does not interfere, no matter what we do. From that it follows that he does not care… or does not care ENOUGH to interfere. When we evaluate actions in THIS world, God is not in the picture. Of course God is free and able to express his displeasure at any time. But up until he does, the only rational conclusion is that God passively allows anything and everything we do… in other words, he does NOT CARE.
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Trevor_Dewey
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The natural sciences have nothing to say about morality, therefore you can’t use them as the foundation for a system of morality. Using amoral natural sciences as your moral base you just get Peter Singer, who is amoral.
The issue wasn’t whether hot surfaces can cause cellular damage, the issue was whether you could prove burning someone deliberately was immoral using any non-God based logical system you choose. And you can’t unless I agree to your axioms, which I don’t. And you can’t make me agree, all you can do is try to force me to obey you (might makes right) by using the power of the state or other means of force.
This is not true: “all human societies” did not adhere to the golden rule, the majority of human societies throughout history adhere to the morality of “might makes right.” There is no need to crack open a history book, modern society is rife with cultures and sub-cultures in which the only rule is “might makes right” or the other golden rule “he who has the gold makes the rules.”
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Trevor_Dewey
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Both are equally good and equally bad in a God-less cosmos.
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Bradski
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If I burn a child, there is evidence for all to see that the child has been psychologically and physically scarred. If I steal a car, the owners loss is there for all to see. If I cheat at cards, I have taken from someone what is rightfully theirs. If I pollute a river, the negative consequences are there to be seen. If I rape a woman, her distress will be apparent.
The axiom to which you do not agree is that any immoral act has negative consequences. And those negative consequences are there as evidence of the immoral act. That is, we do not have to appeal to a higher authority on deciding if an act is immoral or not. We can use the evidence available to make a reasonable argument as to whether it is immoral or not.
If that is not the case, then please give me an example of what you consider to be an immoral act that does not have negative consequences. If you can’t, then you are not in a position to deny that relatively basic and universally accepted axiom. You can’t say it is not true if you cannot produce any evidence to the contrary.
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Peter_Plato
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I’m not sure it has been “put to bed” because you seem to be sidestepping the distinction between harm simply as the demise or destruction of enities/living things that happen regularly in nature (fish die, plants succumb to blight or drought, animals hunt and kill each other, etc.,) and what we might narrowly define as “morally significant harm.”
Sure, we might arrive at a “universal” definition of harm – detrimental reduction or destruction of capacity – but the issue of whether such harm is morally important such that an obligation exists on the part of moral agents to refrain from dealing such harm.
There is no doubt that pre-born infants are “harmed” according to a univerally accepted definition of harm, but you have, yourself, argued that that harm is not morally relevant. You have decided based upon what you have determined to be relevant grounds that harms to preborn infants are not morally relevant and do not create obligations on the part of moral agents.
Now that appears rather arbitrary and self-serving on your part – in terms of your larger ideology – to permit arbitrary exceptions regarding the – so called – “universality” of the concept of harm. There are likely a myriad of other instances of harm that you would regard as morally insignificant.
Therefore, it seems that a merely “universal” definition of harm is inadequate in terms of providing a basis for moral determinations since you are stiil required to offer the method by which morally relevant instances are distinguishable from the morally insignificant classes of harm.
Well, Brad, clearly I am still waiting for you to provide the “best you’ve got” since merely trotting out dead horses and expired fish (harmed though they be) do nothing to provide the warrant for the determination of moral harm required by a robust moral system.
Surely, you have a more compelling explanation to offer, yes?
No Brad. What is moral is not MERELY reducible to what is harmful. I stepped on a slug at work today – clearly, it was harmed. You aren’t claiming I committed an immoral act, are you?
This is all very basic stuff, Brad. To echo your words, is this: “immoral acts must be those that are harmful,” the best that you can do?
Except the fact that the commandment should, more properly, be read as “Thou shalt not murder,” means that it isn’t completely useless. It does require that any killing, to be morally permissible, must be justifiable and not accidental.
God himself, I suppose. Clearly, there has been only one plausible and continuing instance of someone claiming to be God speaking to large sectors of humanity through thousands and thousands of years. Now whether you choose to accept the words contained in Judeo–Christian writings as being from God, the fact is that the speaker of those words claims to be God. Jesus saying, “Before Abraham ever was I AM,” is fundamentally making a claim to eternality.
Well, Brad. At this point I have to stand back and permit your “Sez who?” question to be answered by that voice and those words, “Truly, I say to you…”
And enough has been said from which to deduce a solid moral system, one to which you, too, will be held accountable.
Sez who?
Not me Brad and not you.
Where do you go from here?
Either God exists and the moral system laid out over the past 4000 years is one to which we are all accountable because it fundamentally grounds reality or your “Sez who?” is unanswerable and whatever moral system you subscribe to, ultimately, will be meaningless in the final analysis.
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Pallas_Athene
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You are wrong. Philosophy contains (at least) three parts: “metaphysics” (or what exists?), “epistemology” (or how do we know it) and finally… “ethics” (or so, what now? or how SHOULD we behave?). If the ethical system is not based upon reality, it is useless. Ethics, or “morality” does not float in the emptiness… so the actual foundation MUST rest on the physical reality. By the way, you still have not declared just WHAT is your definition of “harm”. Harm is (at least partially) a physical harm.
I don’t want to “force” you accept anything. I would expect you to accept a rational foundation, and if you are not willing to do it, that is fine… I will simply ignore your (name removed by moderator)ut. There are quite a few posters in that category.
That was the practice of the ruling class, not the foundation of ethical behavior… from the ancient Chinese school of Confucius to modern times the “golden rule” was considered to be the only necessary foundation of a working ethical system. You can review it in details here: iep.utm.edu/goldrule/
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Bradski
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Do you think that because I say that all immoral acts are harmful in some way then that means that all harmful acts are immoral? A dog is an animal with 4 legs. There is an animal with 4 legs. It must be a dog. Hmmm. I think I just need to quote myself from an earlier post:
Note the phrase: ‘make a reasonable argument’. Now, you might argue that that is not an easy matter. And often it is not. But at least we are making a reasonable argument as to whether the harm is immoral or not. Obviously there is agreement on harm having actually occurred before that can happen.
As to your slug example, well there are many such examples where the degree of culpability varies. If a mosquito annoys me, is it immoral to kill it? Or a slug or a dog? Harm to any of those creatures is obvious should I actually kill them, but then having agreed that harm has been done, we have a basis for a reasonable argument. If no harm is done, then we have no such basis. Unless (and I keep asking this) you have an example of an immoral act where no harm has been done.
So what’s God’s verdict on the mosquito/slug/dog problem? Is He going to give us an unequivocal answer on that or do we have to work this out ourselves?
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Trevor_Dewey
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You can not create a moral system on the basis of amoral physical laws. If you can’t understand that, then we have no common ground of discussion.
You are defining your system as having a rational foundation, I have pointed out several times that it is in fact, not a rational foundation. But you have chosen to ignore this (name removed by moderator)ut since you can’t dispute it. That’s fine.
As for not wanting to “force” me to accept anything. Of course you do, in fact your statement “I will simpy ignore your (name removed by moderator)ut” is an attempt to use very mild force (aka the cold shoulder which is an attack on a human’s natural desire for social acceptance) to get me to accept your non-rational foundation as rational (which I’m not going to do).
Almost everyone (save for the rare saintly person) wants to force others to accept their belief system, especially when you believe it’s right. It’s human nature. I am just as prey to it myself as you are: it is the zeal we are warned against in James 3:16, “For where zeale and contention is, there is inconstancie, and every perverse work.” ODR (spelling as in original). Fortunately, wiser heads usually prevail on moderated boards, so over zealous posting tends to get checked.
This is what is called moving the goal lines. You stated that all societies were based on the golden rule. I noted that was wrong and that most societies were based on variations of might and/or money makes right. You then reply with this, which has nothing to do with your original statement and attempts to segregate the ruling class from the rest of society. For most of human history, the ruling class was the only society that mattered, the rest were peasants. And I’m also not sure why you’re holding up Confucius as a standard here, the unification of China and the imposition of Confucianism on its people was done by the ruling class to create an orderly and obedient society. Again might makes right.
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Rau
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Do you mean something like did God want me to donate $100 or $200 to charity? God does not prescribe the course of every decision. I wonder who are the people who says that he does? He gives us law and guidance and a capacity to reason. Well meaning people may well come to different conclusions. Is it ok to clear fell 100 acres or 200 acres? I’m sure I have no idea and I suspect it’s not a matter on which God has had a lot to say.
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Pallas_Athene
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Physical reality is amoral. What is “moral” must rest on reality. If you cannot understand it, there is no reason to continue. Best wishes.
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Trevor_Dewey
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I do not accept this axiom because (a) it’s meaningless and (b) you’re not God to be defining the right and the wrong, the just and the unjust. I remind you of b because of the context of this discussion, not to be snarky, because it isn’t about agreeing, it is about accepting. I have to accept God’s axioms (if that’s what you want to call them) whether I agree with them or not. That’s the bit the Euthyphro didn’t get.
Anyway it is meaningless because in a Godless world I could argue the exact opposite that every moral act has negative consequences.
Let us agree for a moment that heart surgery is a morally good thing to do but for it to happen a relatively healthy person had to have died, usually unexpectedly, so there is a donated heart to use.
A mother in the first world caring for a newborn, morally good? What about all the resources that child will use, far more than in the developing world. What if that newborn grows up to do harm to others (which you define, without proof, as always immoral), was it still morally good for the mother to care for that child?
Under your logic, it’s better that no one have children, because of necessity, having a child causes negative consequences to the planet and to the parent (aside I would like to think there are some positive consequences as well for the beleaguered parent of a toddler).
Which brings us back to the napalming babies, I know that napalming babies are bad because I was lucky enough to grow up in a society based on Judeo-Christian ethics where even atheists inculcated the Ten Commandments whether or not they want to admit such. Though of course those Commandments chafe and are discarded when they are inconvenient, as with abortion.
If you had grown up in a different society (say Nazi Germany) you might have had no problem gassing children, and indeed believed it was the moral thing to do. Or grown up in the antebellum south and believed it was fine to separate young slave children from their mother and sell them.
The biggest problem with the moral system that you’re establishing, is, as Plato notes, you have no problem circumscribing or even abandoning it when it becomes inconvenient. Pallas’ proposed natural sciences based system is much the same, God-less morality is rooted in sand, and as such, can’t help but shift with the wind…
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Rau
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Peter_Plato
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Yes, Brad, we get all of the above. The problem is that you resort to “reasonable” in the same way that you resort to “harm.” You leave it undefined, up to the person you are speaking to to define it and then critique their grounds for claiming what they do.
You never seem to provide the basis upon which YOU ground YOUR moral determinations, merely critique those of the other.
So how do YOU determine when “harm” is morally relevant?
And what makes an argument “reasonable” with respect to the reasons moral agents ought to have for acting morally?
I am not asking you to defer the question to me nor to reiterate your claim that moral agents “generally” know those reasons and the fact that they are generally known makes them reasonable; no I am asking YOU to explicate your criteria for determining when harm is a morally important factor – yes, I get that just because all immoral acts involve harm does not mean that all harmful acts are immoral. I am asking you to explain how you know which specific harmful acts are immoral and on what basis did YOU decide that question.
Again, I am not disputing that immoral acts involve harm, I just suspect that you can’t explicate a compelling set of criteria for distinguishing those harmful acts which have moral implications from those which don’t. The reason I suspect you don’t is because you keep trying to deflect the question.
The answer is both. He does give an unequivocal answer but we also do need to work it out for ourselves precisely because part of being a good moral agent is to grasp what it means to be a good moral agent and to act from that state. We are autonomous beings after all.
Have YOU worked it out yourself?
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