Godless morality?

[Portofino]

I think that a rational society can’t allow abortions without sanctioning murder for the sake of practicality and comfort in general. I don’t regard this as rational; I don’t have an objective reason for holding it. It’s just that I want society’s laws to be logically cohesive and they are not.

What constitutes motivations of practicality and comfort are value judgments, though. For example, if a woman is gang raped, becomes pregnant, and wants to abort, it’s debatable whether she is doing so in the name of “practicality and comfort.” This sounds like it would only be a minor inconvenience for her to carry the child for nine months, but who is to define a “minor inconvenience” for someone else? (e.g., I would consider being forced to eat sausage, if my faith told me it were morally wrong, to be a minor inconvenience; to a pious Jew or Muslim, it might be devastating). Obviously, aborting to save the life of the mother – whether one agrees with it or not – is also not clearly a case of mere practicality and comfort. And there is the question, who gets to decide what a good reason is, and what is not?

If there is no reason to ever make exceptions to “do not kill” then, to use another example, we wouldn’t have an army or an armed police force (because violence would never be justified, under any circumstances).

I think what makes it so complicated is that professed values can and do collide, since morality obviously doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So, there is the Kantian “never tell a lie.” Yet Catholics would support that, if it were a case of lying or forfeiting someone’s life, it is better to lie. Kant disagreed, I believe, finding telling a lie under any circumstances as problematic as declaring that 2+2=5. I believe he counseled not to lie, even if someone else’s life depended on it.

I think, at best, morality sits (uncomfortably) somewhere between pure reason (as Kant would say) and aesthetics. Some folks believe that aesthetics values are themselves rational and objective – C.S. Lewis, for example-- but most acknowledge that there is a high degree of subjectivity there (“beauty in the eye of the beholder”).

I suppose morality can never attain to pure reason, no more than aesthetics can, and yet – at the same time – suspending judgment on all moral or aesthetic questions is, at the same time, all but impossible.

 

[Portofino]

Polytropos, I had thought of an article that might interest you, about studies conducted on individuals who had suffered brain injuries that impaired the part of their brains that enables them to feel emotion, and which seems to reveal a lot about how humans make decisions. The doctor who conducted these studies is named Antonio Damasio. What he found is that if emotion were taken away but intelligence was left unimpaired, that the individual – ironically – found it very hard to make decisions, which left Damasio to conclude that most human decision-making has an irreducibly emotional component. I had seen a short video clip, for example, of one of his patients in a supermarket, who literally couldn’t decide what to choose (it was shown during a workshop I had attended for my job, having to do with better customer services/sales techniques).

Here’s how an article put it:

“According to another brain research study, Antonio Damasio concluded that without emotion, people can’t make decisions. Antonio studied people who received unique brain injuries that were isolated to the part of the brain that feels emotion. Without emotion, their ability to make decisions was seriously impaired. The more they deliberated where to go for dinner, for instance, the more the pros and cons seemed to became limitless. With no emotional value system, they were unable to decide and paralysis through analysis set in.”

Perhaps this is common sense – given a choice between red or blue (or a lemon flavored scratch and sniff, versus a strawberry flavored) reason or analytical ability suspends judgment.

Just so, reason won’t tell you that loving your kid is something more special than loving the neighbor’s kid; nor would reason alone tell me whom I should marry, or if I should marry…

 

[tonyrey]

Then the criminal is as justified in his views as anyone else

In other words “good” and “evil” are meaningless terms. They are just a matter of opinion.

All

principles - including scientific ones - are social constructs
.

Indeed, like morality and god are social constructs

If that were true all principles would be in the same category as moral constructs, i.e. a matter of opinion.

The archpriest of absurdity!

Human existence is absurd

In that case the statement “Human existence is absurd” is absurd! Why should it be the privileged exception in an ocean of absurdity? How could an absurd freak of nature have insight into the nature of reality? It is just another case of an opinion which has no bearing on the truth of the matter - an opinion which is clearly absurd, sterile and self-destructive…

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The doctor who conducted these studies is named Antonio Damasio. What he found is that if emotion were taken away but intelligence was left unimpaired, that the individual – ironically – found it very hard to make decisions, which left Damasio to conclude that most human decision-making has an irreducibly emotional component.

I read a book he published on this. Very interesting and insightful read! I wonder if a person whose emotions were completely removed would even have the motivation to get out of bed. I’ve mentioned before that I think emotional motivations are behind a lot of our decisions that some may view as purely rational.

 

[polytropos]

This brings up my original point that objective truth—which may or may not exist—is irrelevant because everybody follows their own sense of subjective morality.

Justification will be an individual process or a consensus among a group. That we are all human and obviously share most characteristics would mean shared ideas of right/wrong based on common human experience, though not always the same ideas of right/wrong due to personal experience.

I don’t think it becomes irrelevant. Many people do follow subjective morality, but if there is objective morality, then it would be ideal to follow it insofar that that is possible. If the “universal answers” that I mentioned are in Catholic doctrine, then I don’t mean that no one follows them, I just mean that some Catholics follow them.

We can get really philosophical here by asking if anything (such as an objective reality) exists outside of your own thoughts. Reality can be described as a consensus among individuals, but as we can never know anything outside of our own cognition, how can we know for certain that our ideas of reality are the same, that our idea of reality is compatible to the objective one, or that an objective one actually exists?

I think it is very certain that objective reality exists. Descartes for whatever reason decided to popularize a highly aesthetic but useless and illogical aphorism, “I think, therefore I am.” We do not only know our cognition. This is a widely held fallacy of modernity that, if true, would discredit science as a body of knowledge. We know lots of things outside of cognition.

Modern psychology is focused largely on demonstrating the fallacies of the senses. But again, this is illogical. I am touching my desk right now and I know it exists. I am looking at my computer and I know it exists. I can hear birds chirping outside of my window and I know they exist. The senses are limited but not flawed in the ways that Enlightenment philosophers have tried to present them. I may not immediately realize the reality of a visual illusion that you give me, because it was designed to intentionally push the limits of my sight. That does not discredit the fact that I can come to know reality through my vision.

Of course subjective morality has implications – you don’t live in a vacuum. I refer you back to the idea of shared human experiences, particularly the idea empathy.

What I mean is that, when I try to be dispassionate about morality (as society insists that I try, although I would doubt that society tries very hard itself), I end up realizing that I can’t pick between [x position] or [y position]. “Shared human experiences” and “empathy” are nice, except when I am dealing with people who are different from me (it has been demonstrated that humans actually do not empathize very well with people outside of their family, cultural group, belief system, etc.). In any case, those are words that we have attributed value to but don’t help me come to one decision or another on complicated moral issues. If I decide that empathy is my guiding virtue, then how do I deal with abortion? Do I join the crowd who wants to protect women’s “rights to their own bodies” or do I join the crowd who want to protect unborn children’s “rights to their own lives”? Part of the problem with the issue of abortion is that empathy in many cases (not all - certainly - but for the detached observer I think what I am about to say is often true) is not aroused because we can very easily “detach” from the life of a human that we can’t see.

Interesting, if no god exists, can there be any objective truths?

Objective truths as in objective reality (and not objective morality)? Yes. In the respect that certain types of, for instance, matter always have the same set of properties I would find it very hard to argue that there is not objective truth.

The gravitational constant is “objective truth.” It has been demonstrated that it is constant throughout the universe and cannot change.

God decrees right and wrong and that makes it absolute. But that means god can cancel and replace anything at any time to be right/wrong; can objective truth be both absolute and variable?

In Catholic theology, no, objective truth (including objective morality, since we are now talking about Catholic theology) is not variable. God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent; he couldn’t create objective truth and then change it to something else because that would make him either less than omniscient or less than omnipotent before.

 

[polytropos]

What constitutes motivations of practicality and comfort are value judgments, though. For example, if a woman is gang raped, becomes pregnant, and wants to abort, it’s debatable whether she is doing so in the name of “practicality and comfort.” This sounds like it would only be a minor inconvenience for her to carry the child for nine months, but who is to define a “minor inconvenience” for someone else? (e.g., I would consider being forced to eat sausage, if my faith told me it were morally wrong, to be a minor inconvenience; to a pious Jew or Muslim, it might be devastating). Obviously, aborting to save the life of the mother – whether one agrees with it or not – is also not clearly a case of mere practicality and comfort. And there is the question, who gets to decide what a good reason is, and what is not?

Right. I just believe that Catholic doctrine handles these issues much more logically and consistently. In particular, murder is unwarranted killing that is not done during a just war or self-defense (and in self-defense the defense cannot exceed the attack, so if someone punches you and you shoot them, you are still a murderer). Ending a human life outside of these reasons is always wrong in Catholic morality (unless I’m missing an exception or something, but you get my point). Secular society is willing to end human lives for pretty arbitrary reasons. People can get abortions but infanticide is forbidden. I can’t kill the unemployed guy down the street who is a burden on the welfare system, but abortion advocates use the argument that there are economic benefits to people having fewer children. These are logically inconsistent positions. And people will argue them. But then when we get into a discussion about morality, we concede that morality doesn’t even have to be logical.

 

[polytropos]

Polytropos, I had thought of an article that might interest you, about studies conducted on individuals who had suffered brain injuries that impaired the part of their brains that enables them to feel emotion, and which seems to reveal a lot about how humans make decisions. The doctor who conducted these studies is named Antonio Damasio. What he found is that if emotion were taken away but intelligence was left unimpaired, that the individual – ironically – found it very hard to make decisions, which left Damasio to conclude that most human decision-making has an irreducibly emotional component. I had seen a short video clip, for example, of one of his patients in a supermarket, who literally couldn’t decide what to choose (it was shown during a workshop I had attended for my job, having to do with better customer services/sales techniques).

Here’s how an article put it:

“According to another brain research study, Antonio Damasio concluded that without emotion, people can’t make decisions. Antonio studied people who received unique brain injuries that were isolated to the part of the brain that feels emotion. Without emotion, their ability to make decisions was seriously impaired. The more they deliberated where to go for dinner, for instance, the more the pros and cons seemed to became limitless. With no emotional value system, they were unable to decide and paralysis through analysis set in.”

Perhaps this is common sense – given a choice between red or blue (or a lemon flavored scratch and sniff, versus a strawberry flavored) reason or analytical ability suspends judgment.

Just so, reason won’t tell you that loving your kid is something more special than loving the neighbor’s kid; nor would reason alone tell me whom I should marry, or if I should marry…

That is interesting. I have studied some psychology, so I’m aware of a lot of similar studies about how the brain works.

I think part of my problem is that I have bought into society’s message of “see it from the other perspective.” So I let reason become the aesthetic by which I judge decisions, and I can otherwise emotionally detach from them. When I follow a logical argument, it is exciting to me - and that I think has become my emotional response and the way I make decisions.

I am just not sure that the human mind is very prepared to deal with the consequences of reductionism, which are mainly: to reduce a sense of purpose, to get locked in your head, to find that decisions must be made between two arbitrary premises.

 

[PRmerger]

Are you referring to the Feser quote?

Yes.

If so, it seems that he answered “neither”

Exactly. It is a false dilemma.

in favor of basically saying “god is good,” which is a pretty hollow and clumsy statement. That’s basically like saying “god is god” or even “good is good” since you are equating god to a property. If “good is good because it is good,” as you can argue the statement to conclude, what purpose does god serve?

What purpose does God serve?

On the one hand, God serves no purpose. God simply is.

On the other hand, all existence subsists in God. Without God, there is nothing. So God’s existence is of great import, no?

 

[PRmerger]

Interesting, though this assumes that absolute truths exist, and that humans can attain absolute truth. Neither of which has anybody provided evidence for.

You do note the irony in the above, don’t you, Simon? It does appear that in your dismissal of absolute truths you are proclaiming an absolute truth: evidence is required for the existence of absolute truths.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

poly

You have asked me why the golden rule is not a “rational reason” for me to oppose abortion. For something to be a “rational” it must be deducible through reason. The golden rule provides me with a premise for morality, but I don’t think that I could deduce the truth of the golden rule (correct me if you disagree).

We should all act so as to benefit ourselves.
This will happen more likely if we create good will of others toward ourselves.
Therefore we should benefit others if we would have them benefit us. (Golden Rule)

Isn’t this “deducible through reason”?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

poly
**
I can take “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as my basis for morality. Or I could take “do unto others what they would like you to do unto them” as my basis for morality. I don’t have a reason for picking one of these over the other, because either one is assumed, not deduced.**

I don’t think this second version works at all. For example, if someone would like to use us for a meal ticket so that this person doesn’t have to make a living, I don’t think we have an obligation to be exploited. This is a mad recipe for the Welfare State.

 

[polytropos]

poly

You have asked me why the golden rule is not a “rational reason” for me to oppose abortion. For something to be a “rational” it must be deducible through reason. The golden rule provides me with a premise for morality, but I don’t think that I could deduce the truth of the golden rule (correct me if you disagree).

We should all act so as to benefit ourselves.
This will happen more likely if we create good will of others toward ourselves.
Therefore we should benefit others if we would have them benefit us. (Golden Rule)

Isn’t this “deducible through reason”?

Why should we all act as to benefit ourselves? What does that entail? I know that in Catholic morality that would be a very conditional statement: you shouldn’t always act in the way that benefits yourself the most because it would often violates the rights of others.

It would benefit me the most if I stole someone’s laptop when he walks away from it for a minute. If he never figures out that it was me, then I would lose nothing. I wouldn’t do that, because it would make me feel bad - but I don’t know why, and I can’t codify that emotional response into morality.

Furthermore, the world is not so simple that helping others makes others help us. Many people work thankless jobs. Charity, at its core, is not done because anyone expects repayment, whether it be monetary or in the form of other “benefits.” If I am in a position of power, say, as an executive of a powerful company, I could lower my costs to help consumers or I could keep them where they are. If I lower them, I’m not really going to see reciprocal benefits. I will lose money (unless they were too high to begin with - this isn’t supposed to be a formal business example) and won’t gain the appreciation of the benefiting consumers.

poly
**
I can take “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as my basis for morality. Or I could take “do unto others what they would like you to do unto them” as my basis for morality**. I don’t have a reason for picking one of these over the other, because either one is assumed, not deduced.

I don’t think this second version works at all. For example, if someone would like to use us for a meal ticket so that this person doesn’t have to make a living, I don’t think we have an obligation to be exploited. This is a mad recipe for the Welfare State.

I agree that the second one is flawed as well. I would not use it as a basis for my own morality; I’m just demonstrating that I can’t decide why to take one moral principle over another.

The point I make in response to your other post is that even the golden rule fails the rigor of Catholic morality and would still be an arbitrary basis.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

poly

It would benefit me the most if I stole someone’s laptop when he walks away from it for a minute. If he never figures out that it was me, then I would lose nothing. I wouldn’t do that, because it would make me feel bad - but I don’t know why, and I can’t codify that emotional response into morality.

To take something that is not mine in order to benefit myself is not a clear benefit. What if I am caught? A fight ensues. I get beaten up or killed. My reputation as someone who is trustworthy might be ruined. How are any of these results beneficial?

But if I give someone a laptop, I have reason to believe based, on past experience of reciprocity, that I have the good will of that someone; and that it is likely, should the time come when I am in need, that the recipient of the laptop may do something comparable for me that I did for him. (The golden rule … rules!)

Furthermore, the world is not so simple that helping others makes others help us.

This is true. But the more often the golden rule is applied, the more often it tends toward success. In an imperfect world, we get the best results we can get, and leave the rest to the devil.

 

[Portofino]

I read a book he published on this. Very interesting and insightful read! I wonder if a person whose emotions were completely removed would even have the motivation to get out of bed. I’ve mentioned before that I think emotional motivations are behind a lot of our decisions that some may view as purely rational.

Very interesting, that you’ve actually read the book! I had just heard about it, in its barest outlines.

What does make sense to me is that reason cannot tell me what color shirt to wear in the morning. If I don’t have an emotional preference, then I suppose that means I am indifferent as to my shirt’s color. Reason alone cannot tell me what movie I should see, even if the movie’s subject matter were science or mathematics. I’m not sure that “should” is a word that is in reason’s vocabulary; it needs help from what we call emotion or desire, else it is essentially a mechanical tool of sorts, like muscle-power or strength.

So I would personally say that reason alone cannot tell me whether something is right or wrong. Reason can tell me that others view it as right or wrong; or can tell me that, if I act in a certain way, I will compromise my emotional interests (e.g., strictly speaking, not wanting to go to jail and not wanting to incur the disapproval of a loved one, or of society, is an emotional interest).

The only hope I see is in a certain regularity, even predictability, in our moral or aesthetic–and, therefore, emotional–judgments. That’s our baseline, I think – basic axioms that most of us can agree on, even though they are ultimately emotional preferences. I think the right to life is a principle that is abstracted from one of those inter-personal emotional preferences, abstracted from a desire that millions of human beings have for themselves and for their loved ones (and, not uncommonly, for others of their species; or even other sentient beings in general).

We can reason “about” our moral principles – drawing out their implications, or identifying logical contradictions between what we profess and how we actually behave – but I do think, common sensically, there is an emotional baseline to the human sense of morality, just as there is to the human sense of aesthetics (an example of the latter – clean, healthy skin is perceived by most human beings as being “beautiful” and “desirable”, and then it is reason that can help one discover how to better achieve that which one desires). But reason cannot tell you that you should desire clean, healthy skin.

 

[polytropos]

poly

It would benefit me the most if I stole someone’s laptop when he walks away from it for a minute. If he never figures out that it was me, then I would lose nothing. I wouldn’t do that, because it would make me feel bad - but I don’t know why, and I can’t codify that emotional response into morality.

To take something that is not mine in order to benefit myself is not a clear benefit. What if I am caught? A fight ensues. I get beaten up or killed. My reputation as someone who is trustworthy might be ruined. How are any of these results beneficial?

But if I give someone a laptop, I have reason to believe based, on past experience of reciprocity, that I have the good will of that someone; and that it is likely, should the time come when I am in need, that the recipient of the laptop may do something comparable for me that I did for him. (The golden rule … rules!)

Furthermore, the world is not so simple that helping others makes others help us.

This is true. But the more often the golden rule is applied, the more often it tends toward success. In an imperfect world, we get the best results we can get, and leave the rest to the devil.

Certainly we can argue that there are risks that might counteract the benefits. But then I could posit a circumstance in which the risks are removed: ie. I have complete certainty that someone will be gone for a while. That isn’t the point. I am just making the case that mutual benefit is not really supposed to be the motivation behind the golden rule.

The golden rule is not an objective standard for morality. Others’ benefits (or even my own benefits) are not an objective standard for morality.

I’m sorry for being so reductionist but this is just where my mind goes perpetually.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Portofino

What does make sense to me is that reason cannot tell me what color shirt to wear in the morning.

But it can sometimes tell you what color shirt not to wear. As when you are going for a job interview.

**But reason cannot tell you that you should desire clean, healthy skin. **

That is not what a dermatologist will tell you!

 

[Portofino]

That is interesting. I have studied some psychology, so I’m aware of a lot of similar studies about how the brain works.

I think part of my problem is that I have bought into society’s message of “see it from the other perspective.” So I let reason become the aesthetic by which I judge decisions, and I can otherwise emotionally detach from them. When I follow a logical argument, it is exciting to me - and that I think has become my emotional response and the way I make decisions.

I can identify with that, and I like this idea of “see it from the other perspective”, which reminds me of the philosophy Spinoza (I had studied philosophy in college). One of Spinoza’s dictums (or a paraphrase of it, anyway) was, “not to love, nor to hate, but to understand.”

I can appreciate that there is an emotional or aesthetic aversion, even, to the irrationality of someone’s stating their opinions, or one’s tastes, as if they were facts (which humans tend to do regarding moral, and even aesthetic judgments).

And that it is more “satisfying” if someone says, “this is just the way I feel,” even though such an admission still may be unsatisfying to a rational person, because feelings are neither here nor there in terms of ultimate truth.

 

[Portofino]

Portofino

What does make sense to me is that reason cannot tell me what color shirt to wear in the morning.

But it can sometimes tell you what color shirt not to wear. As when you are going for a job interview.

**But reason cannot tell you that you should desire clean, healthy skin. **

That is not what a dermatologist will tell you!

I hear you, Charlemagne, but reason alone cannot tell me what not to wear, either. Rather, reason tells me that “if I want to get the job, and if I don’t want to risk going hungry, then I’d better pay attention to what I wear during job interviews.” Reason apprehends that, so to speak, but it cannot itself tell me “it’s better to live than to die; better to have enough food, than to go hungry.”

It’s our basic desire for life and well-being that give reason a premise to work with, but the premise itself is just that – a desire, albeit a pretty fundamental one.

But it’s absolutely true that, in a “soft” sense, we often use “rational” to mean “that which promotes survival” and irrational to mean “that which is injurious for survival.”

So, for example, somebody that is poking his own eyes, with his fingers; or someone who is picking up rocks and putting them in his mouth, and perhaps ingesting them, is described as exhibiting “irrational” behavior.

Intrinsically irrational, no, but irrational within the context of assuming that reason is properly a tool for survival, and that survival is a goal worth pursuing.

 

[PRmerger]

But even Catholics have just war theory – so, frankly they too do not believe “do not kill” is an absolute ethical standard

Actually, the moral precept properly understood is: do not murder.

That is, indeed, an absolute ethical standard.

 

[wittgenstein]

One cannot get an ought from an is . Also, if morality is dependent on rationality that implies that the more intelligent (on average) are more ethical. If someone is developmentally disabled they have less ethical ability. I disagree.
This spirituality based on self interest I find repugnant. For example,what happens to altruism? To claim that a soldier that gives his life for his comrades did so because he calculated that a few hours of suffering was worth the gain of eternity insults his sacrifice. He did it out of brotherly love. He did not calculate anything.