E
EphelDuath
Guest
Assume that the person in question does not believe in an afterlife, or is not interested in it. Why should he “do good”, save for a satisfied conscience?
- Status
X
Xuan
Guest
The short answer is that it makes for a much more fulfilling life.
If a person doesn’t believe in an afterlife, then this life is it. It’s all he has. He can approach it with shallowness and grab everything he can get his hands on. And many people do. Or he can approach it with wisdom, realizing that giving is much more fulfilling than taking.
I don’t really know whether there’s an afterlife or not, but I’ve learned over the years that I’d rather be generous than greedy, and I’d rather be honest than dishonest.
If you didn’t believe in an afterlife, wouldn’t you still want to be a good person?
J
joemccarron
Guest
Asking counterfactual questions like this can be tricky. If I didn’t believe in an afterlife would I believe in Christianity? If I didn’t believe in Christianity would I believe in God? If I didn’t believe in God would I think my instincts regarding what is good and evil are reliable? Would I think the notion of good and evil are merely made up? Our understanding of good and evil is tightly bound by religion. It’s hard to separate the two.
C
Contarini
Guest
Isn’t that why we all do good? I don’t really trust any “doing good” that isn’t motivated by the desire for a peaceful conscience.
Edwin
E
EphelDuath
Guest
Some hedonists seem very satisfied with their lives, or at least claim that this is the case.
I used to be an atheist, and I did try my best to live a moral life. But the only reason I did so was because my consciences forbade me from doing otherwise.
The problem with this is that if there is no rational reason for doing so, then the people who have weak consciences or senses of morality will simply not do good. I’m looking for that rational reason. I am attracted to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, but it seems that the only purpose for following this is because it is irrational to do so otherwise; why should a hedonist care if he is rational or not?
E
EphelDuath
Guest
Why is it then that sociopaths do things that contradict their own interest?
C
Contarini
Guest
I don’t follow the logic of your objection. What about my statement is challenged by the example of sociopaths? If your point is that sociopaths have a peaceful conscience, that may be true. I don’t know. I never said that anything motivated by or leading to a peaceful conscience was good. One can have a badly formed conscience, and possibly that might derive from some kind of mental disease.
Edwin
X
Xuan
Guest
Human minds are what they are; they’re all different. We don’t necessarily know why a particular person does what he does. We might not even know why we do what we do.
One thing people like to do is rationalize. We have the hedonist rationalizing that this is as good as it can get. We have a Christian hoarding wealth and rationalizing that Christ didn’t really mean what he said about wealthy people.
But there have been many great teachers, not the least of whom was Christ, who have taught people how to live a virtuous life. If we humble ourselves and give it a try, we might find out that virtue really is its own reward… I think trial and error has a lot to do with it.
One thing people like to do is rationalize. We have the hedonist rationalizing that this is as good as it can get. We have a Christian hoarding wealth and rationalizing that Christ didn’t really mean what he said about wealthy people.
But there have been many great teachers, not the least of whom was Christ, who have taught people how to live a virtuous life. If we humble ourselves and give it a try, we might find out that virtue really is its own reward… I think trial and error has a lot to do with it.
G
geometer
Guest
Spiritual health makes for a longer life, and a more enjoyable life. Beaking a moral law injures the one who transgresses.
Believe it or not…
P
PatThompson
Guest
There are lots of well understood reasons why people do good.
It wasn’t all that long ago that any given person spent most of their time interacting with the same small set of people - extended family, other people in the same small town. Travel wasn’t as easy, and we had to rely on those around us for help. Barn raisings, child birth, famines, you know…
Guess what, it doesn’t take long in those circumstances to realize you better help out and be respectful of others, or life becomes pretty tough pretty quickly as you become an ‘outsider’.
Sure, in 2009 we have a much wider world, but still have many instances where we see the same strangers again and again… Imagine insulting the staff at your school/work cafeteria a few days in a row; life (or at least your lunch) is going to become less and less pleasant.
It wasn’t all that long ago that any given person spent most of their time interacting with the same small set of people - extended family, other people in the same small town. Travel wasn’t as easy, and we had to rely on those around us for help. Barn raisings, child birth, famines, you know…
Guess what, it doesn’t take long in those circumstances to realize you better help out and be respectful of others, or life becomes pretty tough pretty quickly as you become an ‘outsider’.
Sure, in 2009 we have a much wider world, but still have many instances where we see the same strangers again and again… Imagine insulting the staff at your school/work cafeteria a few days in a row; life (or at least your lunch) is going to become less and less pleasant.
S
Shin
Guest
A question about an unreal situation, since afterlife exists whether believed in or not.
To not be interested in it is as deadly a flaw as to not be interested in looking both ways when crossing the street.
A person should always do good regardless of his beliefs, because doing evil is always against one’s self interest. Any benefits perceived are an error of perception.
One never chooses evil directly unless one is insane, one always chooses a good along with the evil, that one mistakenly believes outweighs the problems contained in the evil accompanying it. Yet this belief is always an error against self interest, because the whole world is not worth a single sin, and when one’s perception is clear one perceives the harm in its correct proportion.
Only a lack of faith, love, only ignorance and negligence could cause such foolishness.
L
Leela
Guest
People do what they think is good to do. Why? Because they think its good to do what they think is good to do. Is that a helpful answer? Of course not. But what other sort of answer is it reasonable to expect from such a question?
T
tonyrey
Guest
You are oversimplifying matters. People do:
- What they think is good for themselves and good for others.
- What they think is good for themselves and bad for others. (Egoism)
- What they think is bad for themselves and good for others.(Altruism)
- What they think is bad for themselves and bad for others. (Misanthropy!)
T
tonyrey
Guest
How about this?
We should obey what is universally accepted as the moral law because the only way to fulfil ourselves as individuals and live in peace and harmony with others is to respect their rights. To deceive, steal and kill is the best recipe for hatred, discord and conflict!
O
Oreoracle
Guest
On the contrary, the whole idea behind egoism is to do what’s good for you and stay out of others’ business.
I would also like to point out that morals/ethics are “should” statements. The OP is asking why we should do what we should do.
T
tonyrey
Guest
The inveterate egoist puts himself first even if it entails neglecting or harming others. He regards himself as more important and valuable than anyone else. In extreme cases he regards himself as more important than God, rejects His love and isolates himself in a hell of his own making…
The “is-ought” distinction was articulated by the sceptic David Hume. It is untenable because it bifurcates reality and implies that morality is a human convention. For the theist, goodness, justice and love converge in God: “should” statements are based on facts about personal existence. We should love everyone because that is the only way to be truly happy, fulfilled and united. When we fail to love others there is discord, conflict, frustration and misery…
O
Oreoracle
Guest
I have not seen egoism defined as such. They don’t help others because they admit they have imperfect knowledge of what others want.
Ah, but, objectively speaking, why should we be happy? Emotions tend to justify emotions.
T
tonyrey
Guest
Most egoists don’t admit they have imperfect knowledge of what others want. They’re not even interested in what others want. Their main interest is their own gratification and satisfaction.
A loving God would hardly create us to be unhappy.
E
EphelDuath
Guest
Here’s why I ask.
While I don’t think all secular atheists are hedonists, I do think that if there is no type of afterlife or karma where your actions or judged, then there is no incentive to be moral. Kant provided a formula whereby a morality is created by reason, but a hedonist has no concern for being rational: only satisfying his primal instincts. So why should somebody who refuses to believe in any sort of supernatural, do good, other than fear of punishment or guilt?
Again, I am not saying that this applies to all atheists. But I fail to see why this conclusion isn’t inevitable if there is no judgment for your actions.
While I don’t think all secular atheists are hedonists, I do think that if there is no type of afterlife or karma where your actions or judged, then there is no incentive to be moral. Kant provided a formula whereby a morality is created by reason, but a hedonist has no concern for being rational: only satisfying his primal instincts. So why should somebody who refuses to believe in any sort of supernatural, do good, other than fear of punishment or guilt?
Again, I am not saying that this applies to all atheists. But I fail to see why this conclusion isn’t inevitable if there is no judgment for your actions.
L
Leela
Guest
Societies tend to come up with the same basic morals. Don’t kill, don’t steal, no false witness-bearing, etc. Some version of the Golden Rule has been articulated by just about every society we know. What do we make of that fact? For theists who are persuaded that morality rests on eternal principles, this fact may be viewed as evidence that eternal principles really exist and as clues that aid in our inquiry into what these principles may be.
Pragmatists, who take a Darwinian view about culture as well as biology, can answer that the fact that various isolated societies have come up with many of the same practices is akin to dolphins and sharks evolving similar shaped bodies though with very different ancestry–what biologists call “convergent evolution.” Dolphins being mammals have early ancestors that left the sea and adapted for land-dwelling and later ancestors that returned and adapted to the sea. Though they have different histories they adapted similar solutions to similar environmental problems such as propelling their bodies through water efficiently. It doesn’t mean that a torpedo-shaped body is more True and eternal. Evolution has no end in mind. It doesn’t impose a single correct way that a ocean-dwelling animal must be. In fact, there are other shapes that ocean animals take. Likewise, we needn’t view the fact that societies have evolved to hold similar ethics as evidence that some supernatural force is trying to impose a single correct way for humans to behave, but we can still argue that some practices that societies developed such as “do unto others…” are morally superior to alternatives such as “running around killing people and trying to steal one another’s pornography.”
Pragmatists start with a very different perspective on inquiry in general from that of theists and traditional philosophers. In this post I’m relying heavily on Richard Rorty to describe this perspective. As Rorty puts it, “pragmatists hope to make it impossible for the sceptic to ask the question, ‘Is our knowledge of things [whether scientific or ethical]adequate to the way things really are?’ They substitute for this traditional question the practical question, 'Are our ways of describing things…as good as possible? Or can we do better. Can our future be made better than our present?”’ We don’t want to think of inquiry as having the goal of unearthing eternal truths. We see this as a bad goal since we could never know when we’ve achieved it even if we had. So the question of whether such eternal moral principles exist is one that pragmatists would prefer to be unasked. But while we can’t aim at truth, we can aim at better justification for our beliefs. If inquiry is a search for truth as traditionally understood, there is no way to talk about progress without already knowing what the truth is. But if inquiry is concerned with justification, then we can measure progress in terms of assuaging doubts.
This still leaves the question of what we can mean by moral progress. Before I can get there, I need to point out that the pragmatist doesn’t see a difference in kind between facts and values, between scientific truths and moral truths. The “truth-value” of claims made in either sphere is the same sort of thing. When we say it is true that F=ma, and when we say it is true that cruelty is wrong, we are using the word “true” in the same way. So what I said about the pragmatist’s perspective about inquiry in general applies to inquiry into ethics. Just as we can’t aim at truth as a goal, we also can’t aim at “doing what is right” because as with truth, we can never know when we’ve hit the mark. (An aside, I once learned that “sin” was an ancient Hebrew archery term for “to miss the mark,” to not be as good as you could be, while the modern Christian interpretation seems to concern a supernatural force for evil in the world.) You can’t aim at being morally perfect, but you can aim at being more sensitive to the pain of others, at seeing others as part of yourself. Rorty descibes moral progress as “a matter of wider and wider sympathy.” We can aim at “taking more people’s needs into account than you did previously.”
Pragmatists, who take a Darwinian view about culture as well as biology, can answer that the fact that various isolated societies have come up with many of the same practices is akin to dolphins and sharks evolving similar shaped bodies though with very different ancestry–what biologists call “convergent evolution.” Dolphins being mammals have early ancestors that left the sea and adapted for land-dwelling and later ancestors that returned and adapted to the sea. Though they have different histories they adapted similar solutions to similar environmental problems such as propelling their bodies through water efficiently. It doesn’t mean that a torpedo-shaped body is more True and eternal. Evolution has no end in mind. It doesn’t impose a single correct way that a ocean-dwelling animal must be. In fact, there are other shapes that ocean animals take. Likewise, we needn’t view the fact that societies have evolved to hold similar ethics as evidence that some supernatural force is trying to impose a single correct way for humans to behave, but we can still argue that some practices that societies developed such as “do unto others…” are morally superior to alternatives such as “running around killing people and trying to steal one another’s pornography.”
Pragmatists start with a very different perspective on inquiry in general from that of theists and traditional philosophers. In this post I’m relying heavily on Richard Rorty to describe this perspective. As Rorty puts it, “pragmatists hope to make it impossible for the sceptic to ask the question, ‘Is our knowledge of things [whether scientific or ethical]adequate to the way things really are?’ They substitute for this traditional question the practical question, 'Are our ways of describing things…as good as possible? Or can we do better. Can our future be made better than our present?”’ We don’t want to think of inquiry as having the goal of unearthing eternal truths. We see this as a bad goal since we could never know when we’ve achieved it even if we had. So the question of whether such eternal moral principles exist is one that pragmatists would prefer to be unasked. But while we can’t aim at truth, we can aim at better justification for our beliefs. If inquiry is a search for truth as traditionally understood, there is no way to talk about progress without already knowing what the truth is. But if inquiry is concerned with justification, then we can measure progress in terms of assuaging doubts.
This still leaves the question of what we can mean by moral progress. Before I can get there, I need to point out that the pragmatist doesn’t see a difference in kind between facts and values, between scientific truths and moral truths. The “truth-value” of claims made in either sphere is the same sort of thing. When we say it is true that F=ma, and when we say it is true that cruelty is wrong, we are using the word “true” in the same way. So what I said about the pragmatist’s perspective about inquiry in general applies to inquiry into ethics. Just as we can’t aim at truth as a goal, we also can’t aim at “doing what is right” because as with truth, we can never know when we’ve hit the mark. (An aside, I once learned that “sin” was an ancient Hebrew archery term for “to miss the mark,” to not be as good as you could be, while the modern Christian interpretation seems to concern a supernatural force for evil in the world.) You can’t aim at being morally perfect, but you can aim at being more sensitive to the pain of others, at seeing others as part of yourself. Rorty descibes moral progress as “a matter of wider and wider sympathy.” We can aim at “taking more people’s needs into account than you did previously.”
- Status