But WHY ought we love one another?

[Leela]

Hi All,

Why should we love? I don’t think that we have a duty to anything powerful and nonhuman such as a Moral Law for how we ought to behave. My only duty is to my fellow sentient beings with whom I am fortunate enough to spend a lifetime. If you ask me WHY I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I am amazed that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask.

I often hear that for atheists there is something important missing in not having an answer to this question so grounding as “because God says you ought to.” What I am supposedly lacking is often called a philosophical foundation. On the contrary, I think that anyone who needs to ask the question, “why love?” is the one who is lacking something important–probably love itself. People who love others simply don’t ask “why love?” unless they are playing the hypothetical extreme skeptic. The only non-hypothetical people who need an answer to this question are those we call psychopaths, and no offer of a philosophical foundation through reading Kant or Aristotle is likely to convince a psychopath of anything. A theology might work and probably does work for some psychopaths, if the threat of future punishment can be made to seem undesirable and probable enough to balance against the perceived rewards of anti-social behavior, but such is not true morality. Such a person is not doing what is right out of concern for others but only as a matter of animal self-preservation.

For us non-psychopaths, what we need is not a philosophical foundation to tell us why we OUGHT to love since for us this is not a practical problem that we have any need to solve. We already DO love and recognize the virtue of loving others as self-evident. What we need is to better understand HOW to love others–how to better take into account the needs of more of us and to expand and deepen our circle of moral concern. What we should seek is not a philosophical foundation for our current moral beliefs–a way to lend our current practices the prestige of the eternal–but rather ways to enhance our moral imaginations through telling one another better stories about how we got from there to here and what moving forward might look like.

cont.

 

[Leela]

In the US, perhaps a good story from which both believers and nonbelievers may be able to take inspiration about where we are now and how we got here that may help guide is in where we ought to go in the future would go something like this:

Jesus got us to start thinking about universal values while working within the tribal practices in Mosaic Law as best he could, but when his moral view conflicted with the Mosaic Law he asked rhetorically, “do people exist to serve the law, or does the law exist to serve the people?” For Jesus, the Mosaic Law above all taught that we ought to love God, and he reinterpreted that greatest commandment to be equivalent to a second–that we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves. Virtually every society known in history developed some version of the ethic of reciprocity, and like the others, our society has adopted this sentiment as its Golden Rule and as a fine distillation of many of our best moral intuitions.

From Jesus we learned, love is the first and only law. We knew based on Mosaic Law that we ought to love our neighbors, but Jesus expanded our understanding of what it means to be a fellow human deserving of our moral concern not by articulating a philosophical foundation for ethics but by asking “who acted as a neighbor?” in his story of the foreigner–the Good Samaritan. It is through such story-telling that we came to imagine new perspectives and grow morally and our best hope for continued growth through recognizing others as also ourselves.

The life of Jesus and his teaching through stories became itself one of the stories that most inspires us and fits within the broader story of our moral growth that I am telling right now. Stories within stories within stories is how we have grown, with no important consideration to philosophical grounding in first principles required. Such principles can only ever serve to derive truths after the fact from our stories which give us our moral intuitions.

The Enlightenment thinkers, while often rejecting much of religious dogmatism, were clearly inspired by the moral vision of a brotherhood among men told of in the gospels. With inspiration from the Gospels and the Greek philosophers, they argued for the possibility of a new sort of community where all men were viewed as having been endowed with sacred rights–a community where there was no aristocracy and all lives were valued equally. Many doubted that such was possible. America was from the start an experiment in the possibilities for community where no man (and sadly they did seem to limit their ideas to men) was in essence superior to any other. Yet their triumph of moral imagination is remembered along with a failing of moral imagination with regard to African slaves. They simply could not fathom a world where blacks and whites could live together and woman and men were socially and intellectually equal. It took other moral geniuses to show us the possibilities for new communities where a person could be judged morally by the content of her character rather than by the color of her skin or her gender.

Our moral intuitions are not what they once were. How did we get to where we are now? Not through philosophy and finally founding the right foundation for a system of thought, but by stories–the visions of moral geniuses like Moses, Jesus, Gandhi, Siddartha Gotama, Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B Anthony, and MLK having been to the mountaintop and having brought back their tales to inspire the rest of us. It was by reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin rather than Aquinas that opened our hearts to the cruelty of slavery.

Philosophical dogmas founded on the intrinsic nature of humanity has typically been one of the hurdles to be overcome in moral growth. It was thought that The Chosen People were intrinsicaly different from foreigners. It was thought that the aristocracy ruled by divine right. It was once thought that blacks were different in some essential way from whites, and it was thought that women just didn’t have the aptitude for intellectual endeavors. They were by nature too emotional to be able to make important decisions. All these beliefs were held on what was considered strong philosophical foundations. The moral I draw from this story is not that we need to find a better foundation for our philosophies. Instead we need to drop the whole notion that ethics can be founded on something called Human Nature. We ought to favor a view of ethics surrounding moral imagination and the expansion of our circles of moral concern in recognizing humanity in others. Humanity in this view is not a Platonic form to which we need to better conform but a promising project–a work in progress such that a look back through history will give us a hope for future progress and perhaps new visions for what we may someday become.

Best,
Leela

 

[Garyjohn2]

Well, I don’t think I’m a psychopath, but I need an answer to that question.

If I was left to my own devices, I would be way more of a selfish jerk. I used to be.

Loving friends and family make tons of sense, cuz they return the love, support you, and make you feel good. The answer to “why love them?” needs no answer really. I agree with you there.

However when it comes to “why love strangers?” or even “why love your enemies?” this is where I would definately struggle without a real answer, or without faith.

I’m sure there are LOTS of philisophical arguments and formulas that can point to the benefits of society if everyone is good to each other, and things like that. However, when it comes down to it, I’m going to live 80 years or so, its sometimes a lot easier to get ahead in life when you don’t have to think about other people. Why not steal cable? Why not shoplift here and there if you know you won’t get caught? Why not rip someone off or scam them if you can get away with it? This is easy money guys, and life is easier with more money. You only got one life, so make it the best you can with the least work possible!! I know these are deviant thoughts, but they aren’t necessarily phychopathic. They are thoughts I used to struggle with and give in to sometimes too!

There are reprocussions…if everyone does it, it might ruin the economy or something like that. However, if me as an individual does these things, and I have the love and support of my family, and I live an average life expectancy and don’t have kids to worry about what kind of world they will grow up in…it looks like a pretty sweet deal! So…why love strangers and enemies again? I have no idea. Well, I didn’t have any idea anyways.

And I was raised with good morals! “Do whats right, follow the rules, be a good guy.” I just ignored them for a period in my life. I would have continued that way, happy as ever, if I didn’t find the answer to “why love.” There are lots of people out there that aren’t raised with good morals, and end up doing things even worse than me.

And hey, maybe I’m a dispicable person because of it. Maybe some people will think I’m weak and that’s why I need a reason to be “good.” But I’ll just say that if I’m like this, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume there are plenty of other people out there just like me.

I hope nobody judges me cuz of what I shared about myself or my past, but I just want to be an example: The question “why love?”, and the answer to it, are very important! It changes lives. It changed my life! It has changed the world, and continues to change the world.

Just my experience!

I also wanted to add what i think is the answer to “why love?” It’s two-fold.

1. Because we have to answer for what we do in this life.
2. Most importantly, because of who God is.

 

[Leela]

Well, I don’t think I’m a psychopath, but I need an answer to that question.

If I was left to my own devices, I would be way more of a selfish jerk. I used to be.

Loving friends and family make tons of sense, cuz they return the love, support you, and make you feel good. The answer to “why love them?” needs no answer really. I agree with you there.

However when it comes to “why love strangers?” or even “why love your enemies?” this is where I would definately struggle without a real answer, or without faith.

I’m sure there are LOTS of philisophical arguments and formulas that can point to the benefits of society if everyone is good to each other, and things like that. However, when it comes down to it, I’m going to live 80 years or so, its sometimes a lot easier to get ahead in life when you don’t have to think about other people. Why not steal cable? Why not shoplift here and there if you know you won’t get caught? Why not rip someone off or scam them if you can get away with it? This is easy money guys, and life is easier with more money. You only got one life, so make it the best you can with the least work possible!! I know these are deviant thoughts, but they aren’t necessarily phychopathic. They are thoughts I used to struggle with and give in to sometimes too!

There are reprocussions…if everyone does it, it might ruin the economy or something like that. However, if me as an individual does these things, and I have the love and support of my family, and I live an average life expectancy and don’t have kids to worry about what kind of world they will grow up in…it looks like a pretty sweet deal! So…why love strangers and enemies again? I have no idea. Well, I didn’t have any idea anyways.

And I was raised with good morals! “Do whats right, follow the rules, be a good guy.” I just ignored them for a period in my life. I would have continued that way, happy as ever, if I didn’t find the answer to “why love.” There are lots of people out there that aren’t raised with good morals, and end up doing things even worse than me.

And hey, maybe I’m a dispicable person because of it. Maybe some people will think I’m weak and that’s why I need a reason to be “good.” But I’ll just say that if I’m like this, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume there are plenty of other people out there just like me.

I hope nobody judges me cuz of what I shared about myself or my past, but I just want to be an example: The question “why love?”, and the answer to it, are very important! It changes lives. It changed my life! It has changed the world, and continues to change the world.

Just my experience!

I also wanted to add what i think is the answer to “why love?” It’s two-fold.

1. Because we have to answer for what we do in this life.
2. Most importantly, because of who God is.

I don’t think that you are a selfish jerk. With the psychopath bit I was only getting to the basic question of “why love anyone at all?” (which I think is easily dismissed as a question that no one really has except for the deranged) rather than the tougher questions we all have like “who is my neighbor?”

I’m suggesting that these questions only get answered with the expansion of moral imagination as we come to love others as ourselves–not as we love ourselves but literally recognizing others as also ourselves. That is moral growth and the only kind of moral growth. “Thou art that,” as they say in the East. Your suffering is my suffering. Your joy is my joy. That is the sort of compassion that Jesus taught–not to follow rules which presuppose a separation between the self and the other, but to cultivate the love that unites the two where such rules become irrelevant.

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

I agree with much of what you say, Leela, but without a genuine foundation the cynic, sceptic or criminal can regard the stories as fairy stories! The view that human nature is essentially animal does not support the idea that we are all members of one family. The only sound basis for universal love is the belief that we are all created by a loving Father - which is the context in which Jesus not only presented the story but also chose to be nailed to the Cross to hammer home the truth…

 

[HelenaMT]

I’m suggesting that these questions only get answered with the expansion of moral imagination as we come to love others as ourselves–not as we love ourselves but literally recognizing others as also ourselves. That is moral growth and the only kind of moral growth. “Thou art that,” as they say in the East. Your suffering is my suffering. Your joy is my joy. That is the sort of compassion that Jesus taught–not to follow rules which presuppose a separation between the self and the other, but to cultivate the love that unites the two where such rules become irrelevant.

For me, this has always been one of the strongest reasons to argue for belief in God, even when my own faith had disappeared. For that reason, I never went to dissuade anyone from their beliefs or even allow my agnosticism to be known to my friends or family.

In the absence of any natural inclination (and, psychopaths aside, not all humans have an equal inclination to take others into account unless they are part of their “tribe”) the belief that we are all literally part of the same family, as children of God, provides a feeling of community that can overcome the natural tendency for humans to stay within their own circle and only care about that circle. We don’t all have the best characters, but all of us, except for the few psychopaths, recognize that family members deserve better treatment.

The abolitionist movement was a great example of that sort of extension of the circle. Although many abolitionists would have stopped short of recognizing black people as equals, their belief that all humans were created and loved by the same Father forced them to recognize how sinful slavery actually was. You wouldn’t treat your blood brother like that, so how could you treat a brother in Christ that way? Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a visceral account that stirred emotion, but without the context of the Christianity, it probably wouldn’t have contained the same call to action over the issue. Look how many secular stories are told today of horrific treatment of our fellow humans-shouldn’t they ignite us to act? Unfortunately, they don’t seem to, or at least not on a scale that produces enough results.

 

[Detales]

I am grateful to you, Leela, as I have often been for binging in notes of importance to these threads of consideration. I have always thought that if something is Real, as your unquestioned attitude of Loving, there is no need for belief. Belief is thoughts about something as distinct from direct experience. This is similar to the idea that suffering is thoughts about pain. Pain, accepted as a present experience, is defused of suffering to the extent that we don’t make up stories about the pain and simply experience it. Similarly, if we simply experience Life there is no need to make up stories about it. But people who can do that are rare, indeed. Most folk, due to the circumstances and history of their lives and their many circles of social, political, religious, geophysical, etc involvements, are inculcated with and accept parochial views about life that serve to deal with their immediate circumstances. These are rarely accommodating of Universal principles, as they tend to be local paradigms, some of which “made it” for some reason or other, on to the world stage. Beliefs are like viruses. And once we have one, the prime directive of the mind–to be right at any cost–kicks in.

This is why we have such wonderful exchanges with folks, Catholic and otherwise, Democratic or Republican, etc, etc, about our different beliefs. Few if any debates on here are about actualities. They are primarily about defending the stories we bought into as children or formed for ourselves through experiences. But over time, as you indicated with your touring us through some of the moral ideas we have acquired throughout history, there has been to some extent a leveling and broadening of moral awareness. This is despite that some of them are actually re-inventions. The Egyptians of old had great gender equality, as even in the story of Cleopatra we discern that she was an excellent politician and general, and at least one of the “disappeared” queens of
Egypt was discovered to have taken a male name and succeeded her husband as pharaoh. This went along with the equality of men and women in that society in things financial and political.

But what tweaked me most in your statements was the quote “Thou art that.” In my experience it might more usefully and accurately rendered “Thou art That” or even “I AM THAT.” These go more to the flavor of these statements as I understand them at least. They also hearken to the law of Love as you referred to in Jesus’ teaching.

The difference in “flavor” i am alluding to is the one that commonly escapes westernized interpretations or understandings of those statements. Yet I find them to be the essence and practicality of the Golden rule as stated in both its positive and negative forms. These ought, I feel, always be spoken or written together because they encapsulate the action of loving your neighbor as yourself without stating that reason directly.

It is simple mathematics. If I AM THAT, each one who can say I AM is equal to THAT, where THAT equals the essence of all things or God, Spirit, Soul, Love, Mind, Principle, Life, or Truth. If we are “made” in whatever sense by one creator, or stem from the same Bang, and Consciousness Awareness, the great forgotten factor is common to us all, then we can conclude that in essence, I must needs treat you as myself because in essence you are myself, that without negating the differences of individuality on the plane of common experience.

YOu appear to be one who intuitively knows that and acts that way without the need for moral sanctions, rules, laws, or religions. This is sanity and Reality. Again I say, if something is Real, there is no need for belief. Conversely, if there is a belief, there is a story about reality that is not a matching paradigm. And yet, instead of going the way of self inquiry, that age old adage to Know ThySelf, (Gnothi Seaouton as it is scribed on the temple) we are taken in unwiittingly by belife systems according to our circumstances.

Now we can note that a child of a Catholic family doesn’t spontaneously start spouting Sutras, of do children of Protestants build stick airplanes and expect gifts a la Cargo Cults. And most folks who shift belif systems in later life do so under a shock perhaps, but still within the paramaters of what they have on file in their minds about the world. Thes files are, I hazard to say, notoriously and even tragically incomplete, especially in reference to Self. That is to say that most religious and any other belief based “thinking” is no more thatn the manipulation of existing contents, as distinct from any actual discoveries related to the nature of the container itself.

This, if anywhere, is where true discoveries that are fundamental and Real about what we are that doesn’t change can be found out, as differentiated from playing with the ever changing factors of who we are. There are libraries from ancient to modern, Eastern and Western that address these points rather wonderfully, but because of the limiting factors inherent in belief systems, they are usually summarily rejected, though they are in fact addressing the cornerstone of existence.

I myself, having been a very fundamental, studied, and proselytizing Catholic, would have never believed this, and indeed rejected it on first hearing. But then I had a rather life altering experience that made me question the very nature of my being from an entirely different than usual standpoint. Serendipitously, I discovered that there was a description of the world that was based on experiencing ideas that concurred with that most unsettling discovery in my own life. These forty plus years have born out the practicality and usefulness of that discovery. I hope that this oversimplified synopsis both supports your views and perhaps adds a note of curiosity to the mix.

Thanks again for your contributions.

 

[Betterave]

Hi All,

Why should we love? I don’t think that we have a duty to anything powerful and nonhuman such as a Moral Law for how we ought to behave. My only duty is to my fellow sentient beings with whom I am fortunate enough to spend a lifetime. If you ask me WHY I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I am amazed that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask.

Perhaps your amazement here bespeaks a rather glaring, if ironic, lack of moral imagination on your part? At the very least, a great lack of intellectual curiosity? As for the rest of your little narrative of “the world-history of moral progress”(?), do you have any reason for thinking it’s true/accurate/salient in its selection of “facts”/etc.? (Are you perhaps directly in touch with Reality-as-it-Really-is, like Detales, in this case (unlike those silly philosophers)? I often get confused as to whether and when and why you think you are or you’re not.)

 

[Detales]

Betterave, “you” is never in touch with Reality other than that Reality allows “you” to exist and have beliefs unrelated to It such as those you threw at Leela, who is at least thinking.

 

[Leela]

Perhaps your amazement here bespeaks a rather glaring, if ironic, lack of moral imagination on your part? At the very least, a great lack of intellectual curiosity? As for the rest of your little narrative of “the world-history of moral progress”(?), do you have any reason for thinking it’s true/accurate/salient in its selection of “facts”/etc.?

You’ve gotten to the heart of the matter here. In asking whether the narrative I offered is true is to try to beg back the question. My argument boils down to saying that “is it true?” is the wrong question that gets us involved in all those dualisms of Platonism. In place of such questions as “is it objective or subjective?” or “is it absolute or merely relative?” I suggest the question about my narrative, “is it any good?” In doing so I am begging back the question. The issue at hand is whether the Good ought to be subordinated to the True. the question is whether claims about what we ought to do need to be grounded in a philosophical systems of deductions to be valid or whether the true is instead a certain kind of good–what is good to believe or a compliment we pay to sentences which are earning their keep in guiding us to what we want. With regard to my “little narrative of the world-history of moral progress”–where I paint a view of moral progress as better taking into the account the needs of more and more beings through the expansion of the moral imagination for recognizing the other as also your self and their needs as also your own–I invite you to offer an alternative narrative or improvement upon the one I offered, and I will always try to shift the conversation from “but which one is true?” to “which story is the better story?”

Best,
Leela

 

[Thing]

Hi All,

Why should we love? I don’t think that we have a duty to anything powerful and nonhuman such as a Moral Law for how we ought to behave. My only duty is to my fellow sentient beings with whom I am fortunate enough to spend a lifetime. If you ask me WHY I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I am amazed that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask.

I often hear that for atheists there is something important missing in not having an answer to this question so grounding as “because God says you ought to.” What I am supposedly lacking is often called a philosophical foundation. On the contrary, I think that anyone who needs to ask the question, “why love?” is the one who is lacking something important–probably love itself. People who love others simply don’t ask “why love?” unless they are playing the hypothetical extreme skeptic. The only non-hypothetical people who need an answer to this question are those we call psychopaths, and no offer of a philosophical foundation through reading Kant or Aristotle is likely to convince a psychopath of anything. A theology might work and probably does work for some psychopaths, if the threat of future punishment can be made to seem undesirable and probable enough to balance against the perceived rewards of anti-social behavior, but such is not true morality. Such a person is not doing what is right out of concern for others but only as a matter of animal self-preservation.

For us non-psychopaths, what we need is not a philosophical foundation to tell us why we OUGHT to love since for us this is not a practical problem that we have any need to solve. We already DO love and recognize the virtue of loving others as self-evident. What we need is to better understand HOW to love others–how to better take into account the needs of more of us and to expand and deepen our circle of moral concern. What we should seek is not a philosophical foundation for our current moral beliefs–a way to lend our current practices the prestige of the eternal–but rather ways to enhance our moral imaginations through telling one another better stories about how we got from there to here and what moving forward might look like.

cont.

Have’nt you made a mistake? Is’nt the question why love, not why love.

 

[Betterave]

You’ve gotten to the heart of the matter here. In asking whether the narrative I offered is true is to try to beg back the question. My argument boils down to saying that “is it true?” is the wrong question that gets us involved in all those dualisms of Platonism. In place of such questions as “is it objective or subjective?” or “is it absolute or merely relative?” I suggest the question about my narrative, “is it any good?” In doing so I am begging back the question. The issue at hand is whether the Good ought to be subordinated to the True. the question is whether claims about what we ought to do need to be grounded in a philosophical systems of deductions to be valid or whether the true is instead a certain kind of good–what is good to believe or a compliment we pay to sentences which are earning their keep in guiding us to what we want. With regard to my “little narrative of the world-history of moral progress”–where I paint a view of moral progress as better taking into the account the needs of more and more beings through the expansion of the moral imagination for recognizing the other as also your self and their needs as also your own–I invite you to offer an alternative narrative or improvement upon the one I offered, and I will always try to shift the conversation from “but which one is true?” to “which story is the better story?”

Best,
Leela

In other words, to cut to the chase, you don’t care about the truth, but you think you can get at the good without getting at the truth? And you don’t think that’s true, you think it’s a ‘good’ way to talk, and for you the ‘goodness’ of propositions has nothing to do with their truth? (Of course you contradict yourself on this position when it suits you, but that’s ‘good’ in your view, no reason given?)

btw, we’ve already discussed repeatedly on other threads the fact that ignorance is not a good basis for your telling of stories that are ostensibly about the history of philosophy. If you really refuse to grasp that point, I don’t think there’s much I can do for you.

 

[spockrates]

Hi All,

Why should we love? …

Leela:

Wonderful question! I like the answer of the disciple whom Jesus loved:

We love because he first loved us.

(1 John 4:19)

And I find it fascinating that so much is said by so few words!

 

[HelenaMT]

You’ve gotten to the heart of the matter here. In asking whether the narrative I offered is true is to try to beg back the question. My argument boils down to saying that “is it true?” is the wrong question that gets us involved in all those dualisms of Platonism. In place of such questions as “is it objective or subjective?” or “is it absolute or merely relative?” I suggest the question about my narrative, “is it any good?” In doing so I am begging back the question. The issue at hand is whether the Good ought to be subordinated to the True. the question is whether claims about what we ought to do need to be grounded in a philosophical systems of deductions to be valid or whether the true is instead a certain kind of good–what is good to believe or a compliment we pay to sentences which are earning their keep in guiding us to what we want. With regard to my “little narrative of the world-history of moral progress”–where I paint a view of moral progress as better taking into the account the needs of more and more beings through the expansion of the moral imagination for recognizing the other as also your self and their needs as also your own–I invite you to offer an alternative narrative or improvement upon the one I offered, and I will always try to shift the conversation from “but which one is true?” to “which story is the better story?”

Best,
Leela

What exactly are you trying to get out of this thread? Perhaps with a little clarification you might get a better result.

When you say “which story is the better story?” I presume you mean which one brings more of a chance “for the expansion of the moral imagination for recognizing the other as also your self and their needs as also your own-” Since you are a pragmatist, I presume the better story would be one that actually gets that job done. So, what do you propose to use as a device to grab the audience of the story and make it meaningful to them?
There needs to be as big of an emotional payoff as the stories that have worked in the past, the ones that force upon us a sense of real community and family (you are all loved, you are all created equal in God’s eyes). The ones that bring us to believe in a greater force of love that wants us to protect each other from harm.

You seem to forget that the people who need morality tales are the ones that are not as naturally empathetic and need an extra “push”. How do you propose to provide that without providing them with the tangible emotional rewards that religiosity does? For those who have not found any reason to care about their fellow humans (the abused, the imprisoned, the lonely, etc) how do you propose to expand their moral imaginations to include humans that have hurt and abandoned them ?

Most people are products of whatever culture they belong to. What stories can you tell that will give these people the motivation and fortitude to rise above their culture ? Without something above that society to aspire to, how do you make the appeal to the majority of people who are not as naturally inclined to fight the tide ? Without an appeal to something transcendent and real-feeling, how do you make the necessary emotional connections to effect real change ?

 

[Leela]

In other words, to cut to the chase, you don’t care about the truth, but you think you can get at the good without getting at the truth? And you don’t think that’s true, you think it’s a ‘good’ way to talk, and for you the ‘goodness’ of propositions has nothing to do with their truth? (Of course you contradict yourself on this position when it suits you, but that’s ‘good’ in your view, no reason given?)

It is not at all true that I don’t care about the truth. I’m not asserting anything like “it’s good to believe falsehoods” which would cash out to saying “it is good to believe things that are bad to believe.” I care very much about the truth. What I don’t care about is a lack of philosophical foundation for truth claims since I think we’ve never had anything like what philosophers of the past have said we needed and would someday provide for us. I don’t think we will ever cash in on their promises, and I should therefore not be thought of as missing something important in not claiming to have one or in saying that we don’t need one. What I’ve tried to illustrate in the above story is that we can talk about progress without reference to one.

btw, we’ve already discussed repeatedly on other threads the fact that ignorance is not a good basis for your telling of stories that are ostensibly about the history of philosophy. If you really refuse to grasp that point, I don’t think there’s much I can do for you.

If there is something that needs to be corrected in the story I told, please tell me. Perhaps you’d like to offer an alternative story?

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

I agree with much of what you say, Leela, but without a genuine foundation the cynic, sceptic or criminal can regard the stories as fairy stories!

The cynic and the skeptic are the RESULT of the notion that our believes need a genuine foundation. Once we drop the Cartesian notion that our beliefs need to rest on some ground that stands outside of time and culture (which becomes easier when we recognize that Descartes’s desire to have such a foundation was as culturally contingent and as historically situated as any other human desire and did not itself rest on anything outside of human experience) we come to see such skepticism as fake doubt, and we come to see such cynicism as merely the sounds of disappointment many of us make in never being handed the philosophical foundation that philosophers of the past told us we ought to be demanding but were never able to deliver upon.

Asking “why should we love at all?”, is to play the skeptic in merely feigning disbelief in the notion that we ought to love. It is fake doubt because the skeptic can give us no good reason to think that this question is a practical matter for anyone who already does love–as though anyone looks at their parents or their children or their friend or anyone who they already love and needs to ask whether or not loving them is a good thing to do and as though any possible philosophical argument in answer to this question would make us love those who we do not already love any more than such an answer could ever make us not love those that we already do love.

The criminal you mention is a different story. I she does not already love and our stories have no effect the best we may be able to do is to provide a system of carrots and sticks for getting her to act as though she does or incarcerating her if that fails.

The view that human nature is essentially animal does not support the idea that we are all members of one family. The only sound basis for universal love is the belief that we are all created by a loving Father - which is the context in which Jesus not only presented the story but also chose to be nailed to the Cross to hammer home the truth…

But I am not promoting the idea that human nature is essentially animal in nature. I’m saying that humanity is not essentially anything. Humanity is instead an ongoing project that has shown a lot of progress from which he draw hope for future progress.

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

The cynic and the skeptic are the RESULT of the notion that our beliefs need a genuine foundation. Once we drop the Cartesian notion that our beliefs need to rest on some ground that stands outside of time and culture (which becomes easier when we recognize that Descartes’s desire to have such a foundation was as culturally contingent and as historically situated as any other human desire and did not itself rest on anything outside of human experience) we come to see such skepticism as fake doubt, and we come to see such cynicism as merely the sounds of disappointment many of us make in never being handed the philosophical foundation that philosophers of the past told us we ought to be demanding but were never able to deliver upon.

 

[Betterave]

Leela;6541445:

Leela, I’m afraid you are unrealistic in your analysis of scepticism and cynicism. They are not the result of dissatisfaction with, and a rejection of, timeless, universal truths but of contempt for **all **

human beliefs and values. And this contempt is based on the realisation that in a Godless universe there are no objective truths or values. All morality becomes nothing more than human convention. You can take it or leave it. If you choose to leave it there is no price to pay - according to the cynic, sceptic or criminal who regard your stories as fairy stories…

You underestimate the lack of love in the world because you restrict your attention to love between friends and members of families. The whole point is that most love is insular and does not extend to foreigners and members of other races and religions or ideologies. You exaggerate the amount of family love in modern, secular societies. In the UK one third of all marriages end in divorce, one million parents live alone with their children and over half a million old people live away from their children.

You also underestimate the importance of philosophical beliefs with regard to a person’s attitude to others. If you believe we are animals which exist by chance how can you possibly have as much respect and concern for others as a person who believes we are all children of the same Father?

A criminal does not need stories but a social environment in which the belief that we are all children of the same Father is taught and reflected in **opportunities **to respond creatively to education and love by making the most of her talents and abilities. She may not respond but we should never lose hope that she will eventually realise she will be much happier when she is appreciated by others rather than feared and despised.

You are not promoting the idea that human nature is essentially animal in nature but you are not leaving people with any other alternative. Do you think the ordinary person is going to be convinced by the notion that humanity is “an ongoing project that has shown a lot of progress”? The bloodstained history of mankind with the prospect of a nuclear holocaust and more people living in poverty and misery than ever before gives the opposite impression of progress, either past or future.

“an ongoing project” on the part of whom or what? Of purposeless particles? Of random mutations and natural selection? It is far too vague to have any impact because it savours of precisely what you are trying to avoid… a philosophical foundation! And that foundation presupposes a knowledge of what progress is… Where does that spring from? Intuition?
Certainly not from scientific theories…

Leela,

I don’t think your narrative is worthless (though I look with suspicion on your claim that you care about the truth - “is it true?” is the wrong question to ask, you say!), but Tony’s little counter-narrative, for example, seems to be at least as good as yours. So all of a sudden we have an impasse! Where do we go? Moral imagination? Where’s that going to get us? Nowhere, as far as I can see. Imagination is great, but by itself it’s just not an appropriate tool for resolving disputes. Should we refer directly to reality? Go for it, let’s all do that! Or are we going to actually ask some of those questions that you seem so afraid to ask? Are we going to have to dare to really search for the truth, to give in to the philosophical instinct, to take seriously the project of rationally articulating our beliefs?

 

[Detales]

Stories are of ultimate importance. And the Gospels are even called “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” It is vastly misinterpreted, tragically so, but it is a great story nevertheless. But the point is that we humans use stories to communicate ideas to each other. This means, at higher levels of story telling, patterns of understanding and insight. This is the purpose of myth and parable and the layers of ordinary, psychological, and spiritual significance embodied therein.

But as the parable of the sower and the seeds tell us, the same potential can fall on different states of preparedness. I personally find Leela’s advocating for a more and more Universally acceptable and insightful story to be very appealing. So far, even as we too recently have seen in Ireland, even those who have the same story can hate each other. Clearly religion itself is not about good, it only has a nodding acquaintance with it, one which cannot be blamed on one side being right or wrong. Good is another matter entirely, the essence of which is rarely achieved by most men and women.

Good, which is what “god” means in many languages, is not about religion, though religion purports to be about God. But that is not sufficient, as we can plainly see. What has always and in my opinion only bee effective is an innate or transformed state of awareness in which someone who appears as “other” is understood at the instinctive level to be equivalent to “self.” Some Love relationships achieve this, few others do.

But it is this innate understanding that is in fact at the root of both versions of the Golden Rule and of Jesus dictum to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is required because in Reality, in Essence, if you think about it, at the root of things the “other” IS fundamentally your Self.

Now it would be great to have a new story that would demonstrate this, but such have been around for at least 5000 years, only to be misconstrued by uninquiring minds. But at least we might have the grace to look at what is the Universal in teaching and religious stories, philosophies, or fairy tales, and extract from that a respect for those who live by that story as a paradigm. Then we might have connections to work with to demonstrate that in fact we are already in far greater agreement about much than we ever believed.

I myself had to leave the Church due to the inadequacy of its story to address a life changing experience I had. But here, thirty years later, I see the bones of meaning in that theology that I myself understand to be true. Only difference is that the theology presents as history what is in fact the age old elements of a transformative process restricted to the personalization of a figure who may or may not have existed. In either case, the principles apply, and no one is poorer for it. But at least I can now see that there is value in that story, only that it’s interpretation has been somehow lost, most likely in the third century.

Anyway, I agree with Leela’s advocating the need for story, the more Universal the better.

 

[Betterave]

It is not at all true that I don’t care about the truth. I’m not asserting anything like “it’s good to believe falsehoods” which would cash out to saying “it is good to believe things that are bad to believe.” I care very much about the truth. What I don’t care about is a lack of philosophical foundation for truth claims since I think we’ve never had anything like what philosophers of the past have said we needed and would someday provide for us. I don’t think we will ever cash in on their promises, and I should therefore not be thought of as missing something important in not claiming to have one or in saying that we don’t need one. What I’ve tried to illustrate in the above story is that we can talk about progress without reference to one.

If there is something that needs to be corrected in the story I told, please tell me. Perhaps you’d like to offer an alternative story?

Best,
Leela

I think there’s a lot that needs to be corrected in your story, but I’ll get to that later.

First I want to ask you: Is it true that you care about the truth? What does it mean to say that someone cares about the truth, in your view? Is it enough to care about the truth sometimes (when it suits your polemical purposes)? When you continue to talk “knowingly” about nameless philosophers of the past that you seem not to know anything about, how is that consistent with caring about the truth?