Increase of Atheists around the world, increase of crime any coincidence?

[Spaten]

Well, okay then. Make the case that epistemology only concerns itself with what is and not at all with what ought to be.

The different branches of philosophy are:

1. metaphysics - or what exists
2. epistemology - or how do we know it
3. ethics - or how should we behave.
   There is also
4. aesthetics - or what is beautiful or ugly. But that is totally irrelevant. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Why can’t ethics ( OUGHT statements) be just epistemologically grounded as IS statements?

Because “IS” statements deal with objective reality, while “OUGHT” statements deal with BOTH the reality and our preferred actions toward the reality. And your preference is likely o be different from other people’s preference.

My claim would be that we can be as epistemologically certain about OUGHT claims as we can be about IS claims. Prove me wrong.

As they say: “asserted without evidence, discarded without evidence.”

I would have no hesitation stating that the logical law of non-contradiction or the principle of sufficient reason are no more self-evident than, We ought not murder or torture innocent human beings.

You would be wrong. The law of non-contradiction is essential to separate “true” and “false” statements. Without it there cannot be a conversation. Actually, even the negation of this principle would need its acceptance. And the “principle of sufficient reason” is simply incorrect. Any hierarchical system needs a starting point, which is not subject to further substantiation. Axioms cannot be “proven” - they don’t need any “sufficient” reason.

And as for “we should not murder or torture innocent human beings”… the psychopath will counter it with: “Why not? It is major fun!” and what logical arguments can you present that will be persuasive to this psychopath?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

Freddy didn’t back away. The discussion failed when upant wouldn’t agree that there are concepts such as good and bad. You are free to continue the discussion whenever you are ready.

And Freddy backs away again.

I am not going to waste my time exaining my views on morality with you unless you are prepared to agree on some basic concepts. The first being that there aspects of existence that we can both agree are good or bad.

Except that we do agree on that.

I just keep bringing up that as an atheist you have no grounds for establishing that aspects of existence are determinably good or bad.

You just want me to take it on faith because your system of metaphysics doesn’t work to show what you expect me to take for granted – which is precisely why you just want me to grant it to you from the beginning as pure assertion.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

Freddy didn’t back away. The discussion failed when upant wouldn’t agree that there are concepts such as good and bad. You are free to continue the discussion whenever you are ready.

And Freddy backs away again.

I am not going to waste my time exaining my views on morality with you unless you are prepared to agree on some basic concepts. The first being that there aspects of existence that we can both agree are good or bad.

Except that we do agree on that.

I just keep bringing up that as an atheist you have no grounds for establishing that aspects of existence are determinably good or bad.

You just want me to take it on faith because your system of metaphysics doesn’t work to show what you expect me to take for granted – which is precisely why you just want me to grant it to you from the beginning as pure assertion.

So if I break my leg, you cannot describe that as just being being bad. You need some metaphysical reason for it to be described thus.

Seriously?

 

[upant]

I am desperately trying to find some common ground here. You seem equally determined to avoid that at all costs. And if you have reached the point where you won’t even agree that illness is bad and health is good then I see no point in discussing anything at all.

you want to define good and evil on a societal level that can change. I define it on a universal level that can’t change. how can we agree? child sacrifice was bad, now it is good. I can’t go along with changing my definition of good to agree with this. child sacrifice isn’t bad, it is evil.

you deny the world was created by God and that there is an afterlife but somehow expect me to believe there is this sense of duty and obligation based I’m assuming on evolutionary forces. evolution is about the survival of the species, it is about constant change. it isn’t about concepts of good and evil. how is evil defined? you won’t even call it evil.

God’s law is not declared, nor enforced.

It is if you are a believer

Try that defense when you violate a human law, and you are caught.

definitely would have to suffer the consequences.

If you are walking down the road and meet an old friend you haven’t seen in years then that is good. If you meet a mugger who beats you up and steals your money, then that’s bad. And you don’t need a belief in any deity at all to be able to describe the first incident as good and the second as bad.

Dawkins calls it luck, you call it good who is right. do you see the point? what does the atheist system call it?

Do you accept that we can, in a general sense, determine between that which is good and that which was bad?

can you accept good and evil on God’s terms? Can you accept the teachings of the new testament, the catholic catechism?

 

[upant]

First of all, “random existence” is an assertion

referring to the world being created without a creator.

Even among other social animals there are social hierarchies and social rules, so evolution certainly can create some sort of ordered existence, whether it’s a bison herd, a chimpanzee tribe, or human societies.

survival of the fittest, sure, those who don’t keep up…

Can you justify “sex outside of marriage” as an immoral act without resorting to the Ten Commandments?

herein lies the difference, without God’s authority, it is just another decision to be voted upon by the majority and then it can change. there really is no standard. child sacrifice was evil decades ago and today it is acceptable. what good are morals that aren’t anchored to something? what are your morals anchored to that won’t change?

Where do they come from? Evolution, culture and our brains. We have some basic morality baked into our genes, our culture builds and shapes them and our brain processes them.

where is the universal code? what is the anchor for these morals? who is the arbitrator when people have disagreements over what is moral? in the example above, adultery and fornication were considered immoral for a long time and now some people don’t consider them immoral but many still do. it can’t be both. who decides

secular morality is about me and my morals can change as my needs change. God’s morals don’t change, a person can choose not to follow them but the morals don’t change.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

My claim would be that we can be as epistemologically certain about OUGHT claims as we can be about IS claims. Prove me wrong.

As they say: “asserted without evidence, discarded without evidence.”

So you are saying OUGHT claims are without certainty? You are UNCERTAIN that murder or torture of innocents is wrong, but you are completely CERTAIN concerning IS claims such as the Earth is spherical?

Bizarre.

HarryStotle:

I would have no hesitation stating that the logical law of non-contradiction or the principle of sufficient reason are no more self-evident than, We ought not murder or torture innocent human beings.

You would be wrong. The law of non-contradiction is essential to separate “true” and “false” statements. Without it there cannot be a conversation. Actually, even the negation of this principle would need its acceptance. And the “principle of sufficient reason” is simply incorrect. Any hierarchical system needs a starting point, which is not subject to further substantiation. Axioms cannot be “proven” - they don’t need any “sufficient” reason.

And as for “we should not murder or torture innocent human beings”… the psychopath will counter it with: “Why not? It is major fun!” and what logical arguments can you present that will be persuasive to this psychopath?

So what is your point?

Objective morality is to be discarded because psychopaths exist?

Then why not discard objective reality because psychotic persons exist?

If the psychotic person thinks he is watching pink flying elephants there are no logical or epistemological arguments that would be persuasive to him either, precisely because he is not operating under the parameters of reason or logic. In the same way the psychopath isn’t operating within the moral order.

That doesn’t prove a moral order does not exist, just as psychotic persons operating divorced from the logical rational order does not prove reality is not rationally apprehended.

If you are really claiming that the epistemic certainty of moral claims such as The murder of innocent human beings is wrong can be shown uncertain because psychopaths might challenge it, that would make me doubt that you apprehend the moral order precisely because you are taking the viewpoints of psychopaths as serious moral claims.

You may as well, then discard, reason and logic out of sympathy for the schizophrenic person who has lost touch with reality and the transcendent rational principles by which we make sense of it.

 

[Pattylt]

What you are getting at here, is that morality assumes a transcendent or supernatural order of value and meaning or significance. I don’t dispute that.

I sure hope that isn’t what I said. Morality assumes a moral brain that uses emotion and reason. Evolution found benefits in those that behaved in ways that improved the survival of the group (evolution works on groups). Those behaviors that worked were further developed by the culture and we call that moral behavior. Our brains figured out that increasing the overall happiness of the group were good and the opposite were bad. We had a harder time with other groups and it took much longer to understand that increasing the happiness of out groups would also benefit us. That’s why morality has changed and improved over time…slavery wasn’t immoral then it was. We make mistakes, we sometimes backtrack but overall progress has us becoming more moral overall.

It wouldn’t, in that case, be morality that is “baked into our genes.” It would be some kind of preferential behaviour that points us at biological survival. That would merely mean that survival is preferred by individuals over the alternatives.

That, unfortunately, does not imply that it is morally wrong to capriciously end the life of innocent human beings. Someone might claim that such preferences raise to the level of moral claims, but that wouldn’t be so.

For most of human history, there was little to no value placed on anyone else’s lives except those within your own tribe or family. Even in biblical times most people didn’t lose a wink of sleep over the slaughter of the Canaanites, including women and children. We have expanded our morality to now encompass all of humanity as deserving of happiness. Christianity promoted this. I’ll give credit where credit is due! Unfortunately, 65% or so of the US hasn’t reached the moral level of the unborn to include the right of happiness. I, personally, think that may change in the future but what do I know?

A wrong was done to the fabric of existence, the moral order of which that person is/was a very valuable part.

No argument from me here except by what you mean as the fabric of existence? The problem is the value the general society has towards the fetus. Most of history never gave much value to the fetus either. As I said this is relatively new in human societies. Of course the immediate family may have cared but I’m talking about general society.

Finally, yes it is about what we feel. You include God into your feelings, I do not. Yet, I claim I am as moral as the next average person, Christian or not.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

What you are getting at here, is that morality assumes a transcendent or supernatural order of value and meaning or significance. I don’t dispute that.

I sure hope that isn’t what I said. Morality assumes a moral brain that uses emotion and reason. Evolution found benefits in those that behaved in ways that improved the survival of the group (evolution works on groups). Those behaviors that worked were further developed by the culture and we call that moral behavior. Our brains figured out that increasing the overall happiness of the group were good and the opposite were bad. We had a harder time with other groups and it took much longer to understand that increasing the happiness of out groups would also benefit us. That’s why morality has changed and improved over time…slavery wasn’t immoral then it was. We make mistakes, we sometimes backtrack but overall progress has us becoming more moral overall.

Except that what you are giving here is a kind of historical narrative of what YOU suppose morality is, assuming that morality is merely what you purport it to be.

In other words you define morality as “behaviours that ensure the survival of society” and then move to describe how those behaviours came to be historically.

A couple of points…

1. Was Genghis Khan acting morally? His actions ensured the survival of his society – in fact, the superlative growth and expansion of his society into the largest contiguous empire in history, when he died. Way to go, Genghis! A fine moral person you were, according to @Pattylt!
2. Your narrative on slavery is simplistic and very likely untrue. There was no "slavery wasn’t immoral then it was [moral]. Progress in society hasn’t been linear. There are many human beings alive today that traffic other human beings and keep them enslaved. There were ancient cultures that abhorred slavery. Germany in the late 1800s was somewhat cultured and likely highly moral, by 1940 there were a contingent of Germans who BECAME brutal and sadistic. This is almost universally true – civilized cultures have come and gone. Barbaric cultures have, as well. And likely will again - North Korea and China, for example. I would guess China at the time of Confucius was far more civilized than today, and certain Islamic cultures have been far more moral than ISIS. This long slow progressive moral enlightenment is a myth. Killing hundreds of millions of our own unborn is hardly proof of moral enlightenment.

There is more, but my fingers are getting tired.

 

[Pattylt]

where is the universal code? what is the anchor for these morals? who is the arbitrator when people have disagreements over what is moral?

The universal code is the basic morality we start with. You claim it comes from God and I claim it comes from us, our brains. And morality even from God has changed in interpretation. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. I know why Catholics changed to Sunday but that isn’t the Sabbath…when was last time you kept Saturday holy?

Is it ok for you to eat pork…yes, Jesus changed it. Is it ok for a Jew to eat pork? They would claim they can not. It isn’t moral for them. Without using religion on either side, what’s moral here? I know Jews that will literally throw up if they suddenly realize they’ve taken a bite of pork…the morality of the command is so ingrained in them! Morals increase the happiness of the largest group. If they don’t, many will see it as immoral or amoral. The morals we all agree on benefit the most people…make them happier.

 

[Pattylt]

I have to go…
Quickly, I never said it was linear. I even specifically said it can backtrack. In the 1700’s, the south used the Bible to argue the morality of slavery. They weren’t all immoral people, they just later changed their morality…well, most of them.

Gengis Kahn probably didn’t have a lick of problem with his morality. Morals change when we realize that a wider circle than our family or tribe deserve happiness, too. That’s where we have changed our moral outlook…we’ve widened the pool deserving happiness.

I have to go…back tomorrow.

Oh, and arguing abortion with me is pointless…I’m anti abortion, just so you know.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

Freddy didn’t back away. The discussion failed when upant wouldn’t agree that there are concepts such as good and bad. You are free to continue the discussion whenever you are ready.

And Freddy backs away again.

I am not going to waste my time exaining my views on morality with you unless you are prepared to agree on some basic concepts. The first being that there aspects of existence that we can both agree are good or bad.

Except that we do agree on that.

I just keep bringing up that as an atheist you have no grounds for establishing that aspects of existence are determinably good or bad.

You just want me to take it on faith because your system of metaphysics doesn’t work to show what you expect me to take for granted – which is precisely why you just want me to grant it to you from the beginning as pure assertion.

So if I break my leg, you cannot describe that as just being being bad. You need some metaphysical reason for it to be described thus.

Seriously?

Perhaps a metaphysical reason for why breaking a leg is just bad as distinguished from morally bad?

I would also suppose that having a metaphysical understanding of morality would be more crucial than having a metaphysical understanding of, say, gravity. Seeing that the first helps us to understand how we ought to act vis a vis other persons and the world around us, while the second just helps us understand the world.

Why should understanding the objective world have metaphysical priority over how we ought to go about behaving in that world?

Isn’t the question of “What should I do?” be answered even before I decide that I should try to understand the world? Given, I mean, that anything we do in the world has an implicit OUGHT in front of it?

Why should I do anything at all? For no reason? Just 'cuz?

Doesn’t OUGHT have metaphysical priority over everything else, if we are to live a meaningful life?

Why OUGHT I live a meaningful life? Why not a meaningless one?

 

[macska]

It is if you are a believer

It is most certainly not enforced HERE. So we can ascertain about them. You cannot refer to some supernatural realm, if you cannot PROVE its existence.

So you are saying OUGHT claims are without certainty? You are UNCERTAIN that murder or torture of innocents is wrong, but you are completely CERTAIN concerning IS claims such as the Earth is spherical?

Certainty has nothing to do with it.

The Earth is not precisely spherical. But when you use a litmus test, you can be certain that the solution is acidic or alkaline.

In MY eyes murder and torture are wrong, but that is my opinion… shared by millions of others, and NOT shared by other millions. Of course the argument based upon murder and torture are “cheap shots”, because only a handful of people will disagree, and we CALL them insane. Try something less obvious, like “it is immoral to eat meat products, because you can get the same nutrition from vegetables without causing suffering to animals”. Or try to “prove” that extra-marital sex is wrong.

Objective morality is to be discarded because psychopaths exist?

No, because there is no objective morality. If you have a different opinion, share your epistemological process. I am willing to listen. Something like: “this box of goods is ‘N’ pounds, because that is what the scale shows.”

We have no common ground to explore. Unfortunately. The “ought” depends on opinion, just like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

[HarryStotle]

upant:

It is if you are a believer

It is most certainly not enforced HERE. So we can ascertain about them. You cannot refer to some supernatural realm, if you cannot PROVE its existence.

Concepts are supernatural. They are not material. There you are – supernatural realm.

Your consciousness is supernatural.

Conscious awareness is more immediately known and certain than matter. The material world – at least everything we pretend to know about it – is conceptually grounded.

I would suppose it is far easier to prove the conceptual world than to prove the material world since concepts about the world is all we have to rely upon – all we have to ground our “certainty” about the world.

I wouldn’t be too presumptuous about the certainty we have regarding the world.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Objective morality is to be discarded because psychopaths exist?

No, because there is no objective morality. If you have a different opinion, share your epistemological process. I am willing to listen. Something like: “this box of goods is ‘N’ pounds, because that is what the scale shows.”

We have no common ground to explore. Unfortunately. The “ought” depends on opinion, just like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Sensibility is in the eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch of the beholder. So what of it? N pounds is meaningless because the actual significance of the N and the pounds is relative to a whole set of sensible and conceptual parameters – in the mind of the beholder.

If your eye is unreliable as the ground for determining beauty – which is an inaccurate statement to begin with since beauty is conceptual and not perceptual – you may as well claim all of epistemological “truth” is just as subjective, based as it is on like minds which might all be incorrectly calibrated.

Doesn’t leave us much of a starting point except what you arbitrarily have decided to accept or not.

Claiming the ought in terms of murder of innocents is merely “an opinion” – and nothing more – could very well be a sign of a degraded or malfunctioning moral compass, just as someone who claims a sunrise is no more or less beautiful than a cesspool has a degraded eye for beauty.

So killing or torturing innocent human beings is morally evil is merely an opinion, according to your moral insight?

Yeah, no.

You are correct, we have no common ground on that.

 

[HarryStotle]

No, because there is no objective morality. If you have a different opinion, share your epistemological process. I am willing to listen. Something like: "this box of goods is ‘N’ pounds, because that is what the scale shows."

The irony here is that this “epistemological process” is virtually the same as the epistemological process that might be offered by someone who says: This bill of goods is true because that is what the Bible says."

Scale says… Bible says…

Funny how what counts as an epistemological process for you using numbers on a scale is disallowed if someone else tried to use virtually the same process to establish a truth using a book.

The only difference I can see is that the apparent truth on the scale is a simple quantity but the one from the Bible is complex. The need to reduce things to simplistic reality might be more a function of the needs of the hearer than the objective truth to be established, i.e., moral truths might not be reducible to simplistic quantifiers.

 

[FiveLinden]

Now I suppose you would have been more willing to trust your limited intellectual capacities and moral judgement during a time when war and barbarism was pretty much a way of life, but if the continual miraculous interventions by the omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God who has been orchestrating and supporting the past 50 years of your people’s journey

I did not realise that Catholics had adopted situation ethics and that circumstances of war and barbarism can make sinful acts not sinful. Who are my people?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

Freddy didn’t back away. The discussion failed when upant wouldn’t agree that there are concepts such as good and bad. You are free to continue the discussion whenever you are ready.

And Freddy backs away again.

I am not going to waste my time exaining my views on morality with you unless you are prepared to agree on some basic concepts. The first being that there aspects of existence that we can both agree are good or bad.

Except that we do agree on that.

I just keep bringing up that as an atheist you have no grounds for establishing that aspects of existence are determinably good or bad.

You just want me to take it on faith because your system of metaphysics doesn’t work to show what you expect me to take for granted – which is precisely why you just want me to grant it to you from the beginning as pure assertion.

So if I break my leg, you cannot describe that as just being being bad. You need some metaphysical reason for it to be described thus.

Seriously?

Perhaps a metaphysical reason for why breaking a leg is just bad as distinguished from morally bad?

I’m not interested in the reason why your leg gets broken. Or any moral implications. I just want to know if you think that having a broken leg can be described as bad. You know, not pleasurable. Not good. Something you’d prefer to avoid.

I want to know if you can agree that some things are bad (a broken leg, an illness, your car being stolen) and some things are good (an enjoyable book, a nice meal with the wife, a pay rise).

Are you finding this difficult?

 

[HarryStotle]

The universal code is the basic morality we start with. You claim it comes from God and I claim it comes from us, our brains. And morality even from God has changed in interpretation. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. I know why Catholics changed to Sunday but that isn’t the Sabbath…when was last time you kept Saturday holy?

There is so much here that is confused that it is difficult to know where to start. I don’t think there are any intelligent Catholics who would claim church attendance is a moral law. It is canon law, it is a religious duty for Catholics, but it isn’t a question of morality.

Morality would be defined as the natural moral order in Catholic teaching.

The problem with morality, in the strict sense of natural moral order that I laid out above, is that morality cannot come from us, “from our brains” because that wouldn’t justify obligation. We wouldn’t be obligated by moral principles in any way because our brains would be justified in changing them since they originated the moral rules to begin with.

We could ask, “On what moral grounds did our brains create these moral rules and not those?” Your answer, since you claim we just create them, would be that there is no objective reason for our brains to do so. If there is nothing objective to compel us to obey those moral rules, then there is nothing that obligates us to follow them.

If we must not kill innocent human beings, what is the reason that we must not? If you say, “Because our brains tell us not to,” the legitimate and quite rational question is “Why?” If there is no other reason than just because our brains tell us, that isn’t a reason. That begs the question: Our brains tell us because our brains tell us. If there is a legitimate reason that stands as a reason, then morality is objective and not merely in our brains. The reason has to be one determined by reality and not merely conjured in our brains.

 

[HarryStotle]

I did not realise that Catholics had adopted situation ethics and that circumstances of war and barbarism can make sinful acts not sinful. Who are my people?

I keep hearing this complaint. Perhaps you ought to look into Catholic doctrine on ethics and the three dimensions, one of which is the circumstances surrounding the act.

Here, from the Catechism…

I. THE SOURCES OF MORALITY

1750 The morality of human acts depends on:

• the object chosen;
• the end in view or the intention;
• the circumstances of the action.

The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the “sources,” or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.

1751 The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a human act. The object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as reason recognizes and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience.

1752 In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end, intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action. The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. The intention is a movement of the will toward the end: it is concerned with the goal of the activity. It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose; it can orient one’s whole life toward its ultimate end. For example, a service done with the end of helping one’s neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor or to boast about it.

1753 A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).39

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

1754 The circumstances , including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts (for example, the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent’s responsibility (such as acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.

II. GOOD ACTS AND EVIL ACTS

1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting “in order to be seen by men”).

The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts - such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

Catholics haven’t “adopted” situation ethics, the Church Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, along with Theologians and Philosophers down through the ages have developed a system of ethics in line with Scripture.

Moral acts have three dimensions, the object, the intention and the circumstances, the three together making the act distinctively a human moral act, rather than one done by a machine or automaton. This hasn’t changed, although you might continue to presume that you understood Catholic moral teaching when perhaps you haven’t ever.