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tonyrey
Guest
Subjective opinions without any rational basis are worthless in the face of amorality.
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Bradski
Guest
It does seem, Tony, that you have a hat-full of comments and one liners that you arbitrarily pull and post at random. Your average post length - or at least the average length of the comment you make in response to what are, quite often, detailed arguments, appears to be about a line and a half.
Instead of these desk-calendar aphorisms, is it too much to ask for a reasoned and detailed argument from you as well? Try throwing in a ‘because’ after each comment and just see where it takes you.
Edit: And please don’t say ‘Straw Man’, for heaven’s sake. I’m not refuting an argument, I’m making a point (that there actually wasn’t an argument…).
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tonyrey
Guest
Brevity is the soul of wit! If you had been dealing with this subject as long as I have you wouldn’t need to waste words.
The onus is on you to refute my statements if you think they are false.
A reason is valid until it is refuted. Do you disagree with that, Brad?
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ReapReason
Guest
If there is no objective thing such as right or wrong, then you have no objective rational basis to tell people that they have truly done wrong or have done good. Your reasons for doing so are purely emotional; and it is evident that you will put emotion before rationality and objective truth. Your brain is telling you this is bad, but in reality it is not.
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Bradski
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It’s not purely emotional – although we do all act emotionally rather than rationally at times. If you were to ask me if it was OK to arbitrarily kill someone I didn’t know, someone with whom I had no emotional attachment, then I would say – rationally, that it would be wrong. It’s a rational answer, because none of us want to live in a world where people can be killed arbitrarily.
You might say we shouldn’t do it because God has told us it’s wrong. Well, I worked it out myself. And let’s be honest, if any given Christian woke up tomorrow with no recollection of his belief, then he or she would be able to work it out as well. If they couldn’t, then we’d all be in all sorts of trouble.
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tonyrey
Guest
To criticise a person for the number of words he writes is a feeble ploy to divert attention from failure to refute the content of those words. “there actually wasn’t an argument” is a perfect description of the criticism itself! People often accuse others of their own defects…
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tonyrey
Guest
It is not rational to base what is right or wrong **solely **on what people want - as we can see from the state of the world…
You have not explained how you worked it out… What are your initial assumptions?
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Portofino
Guest
I believe that, without human desires being what they are, our societies never would have evolved to a prohibition of stealing, murder, and rape. In other words, if human beings had no fear of death and didn’t mind being murdered (nor did their families mind), then murder would never have been prohibited. If human beings enjoyed being stolen from, stealing never would have been prohibited.
If humans were indestructible, or had no nerve endings to feel pain, morality as we know it would be largely obsolete (as would wisdom, for that matter; for example, it is “wisdom” to look both ways before crossing).
Without human emotion, desire, and preferences, we’d be in living in a world like Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day – jumping off cliffs; drowning our friends (they’ll come back); stealing from others (they have plenty, they can manifest it at will). Anybody could literally do anything he wants, and no one would care. It would be like playing in a jungle gym (as children do) surrounded by cushioned walls and floors. Even mere decision-making wouldn’t be all that important, because there would be no painful –undesirable – consequences to poor decisions. The same would be true if all human beings were profoundly suicidal, or masochistic.
What I think happened, historically, is that human emotions, wants and needs, and desires – and the “social contract” that arose from it – was responsible for the basic content of morality. The basic moral idea. Believe in God-ordained morality and in objective moral principles–including societal moral principles (e.g., the Bill of Rights)-- are a fine-tuning of this basic origin of morality; an essential fine-tuning, one could argue, but the fact remains that – without human wants and desires, or preferences — morality as we know it would be almost devoid of content.
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Bradski
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Tony, if you make an argument I will either agree with it or make a case against it if I think it’s worthy of a reply. But the majority of the time you are just making stand-alone statements. It wouldn’t kill you to expound a little would it and give the reasons why you’re making the statements?
If I spent some time on this I could do no better than Porofino’s post above. I completely agree with what he’s written, so if you read that you’ll have an idea of where I’m coming from as well. Not only that, you’ll get an idea of how an understanding of philosophy relates to modern cinematic classics.
Coming soon: Eraserhead and abortion.
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ReapReason
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Its irrelevant. Pragmatism doesn’t hold in all situations. Situations clearly arise where pragmatic coercion is no-longer prevalent, and abiding by social contract is no-longer relevant. There are cases where pragmatic goals are founded upon different ideologies and therefore what is pragmatic for you is not pragmatic for other individuals despite the potentiality for pain and suffering. Might makes right in many cases where it is profitable for individuals to live a life of pleasure off the backs of others who are forced to live a meager life of relative poverty as a result. It is not clear at all why people shouldn’t take the risk of being hated or risk death and suffering if we are all going to die and possibly suffer anyway. While abiding by social contracts in one way can be positive, in other-ways it can be negative if you are not fulfilling your desired goals. You fear pain, and fear being hated especially when it does not fulfill your desired goals. But i bet you would risk it all if you thought you would have to sacrifice your own individual happiness, since what is point if you cannot be happy, and what is the rational point of sacrificing your happiness for the happiness of strangers whose lives will eventually cease and come to nothing. Your emotions are ultimately misleading you in to making irrational choices.
People experience guilt when they think or know they have done wrong. Such an emotion is only rational if that emotion reflects the objective reality of the act.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
This might explain a kind of “conditional” nature to an ethical “rule of thumb,” such as “If you want to live in a peaceful society it is pragmatic not to do harm to others.” However, it does not explain the universal and imperative nature of many moral prohibitions.
I don’t share a sense that the imperative or “binding” nature of a moral “ought” is a conditional one based upon some implicit agreement to a social contract of some kind. If it were, there could very well be times that I could strongly feel just as pragmatically or conditionally right not to agree, not to act morally.
Your notion presumes that a person’s moral sensibility would have a kind of conditional feature to it. That deep down an individual would feel a kind of superior sense that they would have an essential right to withdraw their personal assent to this moral sense and “go their own way.”
I am not convinced that a truly moral sensibility does allow that. A moral “ought” carries with it a kind of “regardless of how I feel about it at any time” potency.
Imperative moral principles are not fundamentally emotively based. They derive from reason and justice, and are essentially transcendent to mere emotional pragmatism or rational self-interest. There are times when moral principles lead a moral agent to make a choice “for the greater good,” in which case the inherent value of “other as other,” irrespective of my feelings or self-interest, could be called for.
Imperatives such as:
Love your neighbour as your very self.
Value the lives of others as equal to the value of your life.
do not have conditionals such as, “if you want to,” “if you deem it good policy,” or “if you find it agreeable,” attached to them.
Ethical imperatives have an unconditional flavor to them that mere pragmatic prerogatives can ever have. The idea that you “can never derive an ought from an is” seems to capture the sense that a true ethical system is not of an optional “buy in” sort.
I am, likewise, not convinced that this is a “fine- tuning” feature that came about after the fact.
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Bradski
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Quite right, it doesn’t. But pragmatism is not being held up as the answer to the world’s problems. It just is. I’m not even sure you can describe pragmatism as a philosophy any more than you can describe breathing in and out as a real good way to staying alive.
Pragmatism is the social contract is the Golden Rule. It is the glue that holds civilisation together. And yes, it does break down. Too often, I’m afraid. But people don’t think that the social contract is no longer applicable per se. They just think that it isn’t applicable to them, at that time, in those circumstances. And then they turn on the gas and get out the machetes and drop the bombs.
And I’m afraid that religion is no deterrent to that happening. A belief in God doesn’t prevent you from slaughtering people. It’s not generally the cause but it’s certainly not a solution. The common response, that they ‘weren’t really Christians’ can be made in regard to all nations that classed themselves as Christian at some point or other. Maybe you could point me to a country that is a good example of a Christian nation so we’d all have something to which to aspire.
A common humanity is our best bet and we should all be working towards that. If you think that religion will help you personally in that aim, then who would argue.
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Portofino
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I was actually including the Other – my neighbor – in the statement, “if we did not care about being murdered, or stolen from, then murder or stealing never would have been prohibited.”
Let’s take a world where human beings were fundamentally suicidal and masochistic. In other words, where Jewish civilians wanted to be rounded up and put in gas chambers; or, at least, wouldn’t mind it. We know, of course, that this wasn’t the case. My point is that unless not wanting to be abused or killed were not the norm in terms of human desires and preferences, we would have had no basis for making sense of even an altruistic morality. I’m positing that we conceived of human rights in terms of what human beings want*. We can – and, perhaps, must – get much more abstract and universal about it, and say, “even if they wanted me to harm them, it would still be wrong” (the prohibition has transcended them as individuals). But I would posit that we would not even have evolved this “even if” thinking, if it weren’t a fact that the vast majority of people do not want to be treated in this way.
You can replicate the steps that this morality took: “I don’t want to be harmed and I don’t want my family harmed”; “my neighbor doesn’t want to be harmed and doesn’t want his family harmed”; “if I don’t want to be harmed, I need to make a truce and not harm my neighbor”; but, taking it a step further, now – “* harm is bad*”; “*even if *my neighbor had no chance at retaliation, it is still bad to harm my neighbor” (though self-interest could say, “I wouldn’t want my neighbor to harm me, just because I had no chance at retaliation”). What started as something concrete and situational thus became a universal moral principle.
I agree, however, that the history of human societies have involved cases of a minority of selfish individuals exploiting and profiting from the majority. They are the top of the pecking order, and have enjoyed more rights than their neighbor. That is, indeed, a perfect set-up for them, at least superficially.
What happened historically, however, is social revolution; social unrest; the rising up of the masses. Lack of education and of awareness was, of course, necessary in order to keep the minority in power over the majority (as well as fear). It lasted for a long while – and still lasts, to a large extent – but the “oppressed minority” have learned to form alliances with others who are oppressed, in order to increase their strength (including labor unions). They’ve cooperated with each other and have rivaled the “ruling class” in power, forcing them to make concessions to a more egalitarian society.
A perfect example is the overthrow of Louis XVI, who was beheaded. The rights of the people were recognized, because the people fought for them. They fought for their interests, as they understood them. If they enjoyed being oppressed – and enjoyed hunger, or slavery, or premature death – then such social upheavals would never have happened.
But the point I was ultimately making is much broader – namely, if people (other people) didn’t have a problem with being abused or exploited, or even killed, we wouldn’t have a conception that, “abuse, exploitation, and killing of others is wrong.”.
Those, however (freedom from harm or abuse) are subjective human preferences; human wants, needs, and desires (not only my own, but other people’s).
We take this, and we make a universal maxim of it; an impartial one (“justice is blind”). By doing so, we make abstract – and “rational”, and systematized – that which originally was based on concrete human desires and preferences.
And we certainly don’t do it perfectly, even if we think we do. Thus, there is still the unspoken belief that, “American lives are more valuable than non-American lives”; “the lives of my immediate family members are more important than the lives of strangers”; “I feel strongly that American children shouldn’t work in sweat shops, but much less strongly about non-American children doing so.” Our laws are better at being impartial, than we as individuals are.*
Let’s take a world where human beings were fundamentally suicidal and masochistic. In other words, where Jewish civilians wanted to be rounded up and put in gas chambers; or, at least, wouldn’t mind it. We know, of course, that this wasn’t the case. My point is that unless not wanting to be abused or killed were not the norm in terms of human desires and preferences, we would have had no basis for making sense of even an altruistic morality. I’m positing that we conceived of human rights in terms of what human beings want*. We can – and, perhaps, must – get much more abstract and universal about it, and say, “even if they wanted me to harm them, it would still be wrong” (the prohibition has transcended them as individuals). But I would posit that we would not even have evolved this “even if” thinking, if it weren’t a fact that the vast majority of people do not want to be treated in this way.
You can replicate the steps that this morality took: “I don’t want to be harmed and I don’t want my family harmed”; “my neighbor doesn’t want to be harmed and doesn’t want his family harmed”; “if I don’t want to be harmed, I need to make a truce and not harm my neighbor”; but, taking it a step further, now – “* harm is bad*”; “*even if *my neighbor had no chance at retaliation, it is still bad to harm my neighbor” (though self-interest could say, “I wouldn’t want my neighbor to harm me, just because I had no chance at retaliation”). What started as something concrete and situational thus became a universal moral principle.
I agree, however, that the history of human societies have involved cases of a minority of selfish individuals exploiting and profiting from the majority. They are the top of the pecking order, and have enjoyed more rights than their neighbor. That is, indeed, a perfect set-up for them, at least superficially.
What happened historically, however, is social revolution; social unrest; the rising up of the masses. Lack of education and of awareness was, of course, necessary in order to keep the minority in power over the majority (as well as fear). It lasted for a long while – and still lasts, to a large extent – but the “oppressed minority” have learned to form alliances with others who are oppressed, in order to increase their strength (including labor unions). They’ve cooperated with each other and have rivaled the “ruling class” in power, forcing them to make concessions to a more egalitarian society.
A perfect example is the overthrow of Louis XVI, who was beheaded. The rights of the people were recognized, because the people fought for them. They fought for their interests, as they understood them. If they enjoyed being oppressed – and enjoyed hunger, or slavery, or premature death – then such social upheavals would never have happened.
But the point I was ultimately making is much broader – namely, if people (other people) didn’t have a problem with being abused or exploited, or even killed, we wouldn’t have a conception that, “abuse, exploitation, and killing of others is wrong.”.
Those, however (freedom from harm or abuse) are subjective human preferences; human wants, needs, and desires (not only my own, but other people’s).
We take this, and we make a universal maxim of it; an impartial one (“justice is blind”). By doing so, we make abstract – and “rational”, and systematized – that which originally was based on concrete human desires and preferences.
And we certainly don’t do it perfectly, even if we think we do. Thus, there is still the unspoken belief that, “American lives are more valuable than non-American lives”; “the lives of my immediate family members are more important than the lives of strangers”; “I feel strongly that American children shouldn’t work in sweat shops, but much less strongly about non-American children doing so.” Our laws are better at being impartial, than we as individuals are.*
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Portofino
Guest
The central statement in my post (the main idea) was intended to be following: “if human beings were indestructible, or did not have nerve endings to feel pain, morality as we know it would not exist.”
One concrete example – “feed the hungry; clothe the naked; heal the sick.” The morality of this would not have been conceived of, if the following were true: “hunger feels good, and starvation is physically impossible”; “human beings enjoy extremely cold temperatures and are invulnerable to the elements”; “sickness is enjoyed greatly, and can never lead to death.”
All of these things, however, have to do with: human emotions; human sensations; human wants, desires, needs, and preferences. What they do not have to do with is human reason, per se. We could be perfectly rational creatures, and not experience pain, nor be vulnerable to death. Our susceptibility to pain, and our vulnerability to death, is what grounds our moral concepts as regards other people (and what grounds wisdom or common sense, as regards ourselves).
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I don’t disagree with you, except to add that this may be a necessary component of moral origins but not sufficient to explain the powerful “ought” imperative that at least some humans feel is inherent to the nature of morality. How does your “nerve endings” theory of moral origins actually entail a moral “ought” rather than merely generating pragmatic sensibilities among humans? Yep, we need nerve endings to make sense of morality, but why did humans, unnecessarily, it would seem, develop moral imperatives rather than just conditional or pragmatic ones which would suffice for the protection of nerve endings?
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Ion
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For a reasonable person, at our level of knowledge, the fact that our universe is finite (imense but finite) yet we can imagine the infinite and think about it (Cantor theories in math for example), should suffice.
Very interesting Alistair McGrath (vs Richard Dawkins), the way he explains that we should rather focus on how we do experience the reality from believing/non-believing points of view.
Very interesting Alistair McGrath (vs Richard Dawkins), the way he explains that we should rather focus on how we do experience the reality from believing/non-believing points of view.
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tonyrey
Guest
- Your suggestion implicitly rejects the value of physical existence.
- Our susceptibility to mental anguish and our vulnerability to animosity also ground our moral concepts.
- Morality does not exist in an entirely physical existence.
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tonyrey
Guest
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tonyrey
Guest
Common humanity is clearly not enough to deter everyone from slaughtering people.
Consistent belief in a just and loving Creator is the only rational deterrent because it is the only logical foundation for the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity…
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