We should we be allowed to enforce *our own* moral standard? And if you disagree with moral standards that are being enforced, do you have any right to try to change that? And if so, why bother to try to change it? For example, lets say a group of people advocates killing homosexuals. You disagree with this practice. Is it your place to try to stop them or change their practices? If so, why are you trying to enforce your own morality over theirs, which is not objectively worse or better. If not, what do you think of activism, such as the civil rights movement of the 60s? That's why I said "as Topher suggested", since the post of mine that you quoted was in response to him. If we wish to define morality, then we need a set of axioms to base it off of. If you're not defining morality, then don't respond to my points that were specifically about defining morality. However, the statement that "morality doesn't exist" is axiomatic in itself. You've just made a definition and an argument, and no matter how I try to describe to you what you've just done, I'm sure you'll come back somehow saying that I've gotten it wrong, but that's not the point. Your axiom is that there's no objective standard of right and wrong. But you just said "we have no choice but to act instinctively". In fact, you put the words "no choice" in italics. Now you're implying that we do have a choice That aside, utilitarianism isn't really a set of rules. You can derive rules from the principles of utilitarianism, but I doubt all utilitarians agree what the logical conclusions of those principles for every single situation. This is what you say, but aside from your arguments not really being consistant, I doubt that's what you act on. See, you're not following your arguments through to their logical conclusion. You just mentioned "harm" and "repulsion" as things we should avoid. But this is not consistent with your argument. Why should we avoid things that "harm" and "repulse" us? Why should we have deterrents in place for those things? Unless you assign some negative value to "harm" and "repulse" there is no reason to introduce a deterrent. You're waffling about what you want to say, it seems. On the one hand, you seem to be spouting moral relativism--that society gets to define morality and can determine appropriate punishments/deterrents. On the other hand, you're arguing that you're arguing that you don't believe there's any way to ever define morality whatsoever and that the only choice human beings have is to act instinctively--and that people usually just act however they want to (which isn't true). Of course, maybe this is to be expected, since you also claim that your arguments aren't based off of axioms. I'm sorry, but do you have any anthropological evidence to support this whatsoever? Society has always followed rules and guidlines which are in place specifically to keep people from just doing "whatever is instinctive". That's the whole point of socieity in the first place. Don't underestimate the amount of work that goes into building and maintaining a complex social structure. Different socieities can treat different aspects of morality VERY differently. It's not all instinctive. Have you ever noticed the difference between the way a child acts and an adult when it comes to getting his way and getting what he wants? It's not all a natural result of aging. Huh? Your instincts tell you to stop when your instincts are telling you to go ahead and do something I'll bet more of your "instincts" are learned than you think. Aside from the fact that that doesn't answer my question, you might also ask yourself why you feel that it's instinctively wrong, and if it necessarrily has to, and why some people go ahead and do it even though you think it feels instinctively wrong. Do they just have screwed up instincts? My question, though, was actually as to whether or not you've ever felt like you really wanted to punch someone in the nose but not done it anyway? Haven't you ever thought "gee, it would feel so great to hit this guy, but I know I shouldn't"? Can you honestly say no to that? I doubt it. If so, you're certainly in the minority. Society has all sorts of formal systems, even if they're not all necessarrily written. Many of them are, though, like for example, the law. Get rid of laws, and we'll see how well society does. And while the law doesn't always seem logical, it is about as formal of a system as you can get. Why does that matter? You have never explained why this is important. If you had said killing of neighbors, I might have agreed with you. But many societies might treat random passers by as non-people, and killing them would be acceptable. While pleasant, that doesn't actually answer any relevant questions. The crux of the issue is this: Are you or are you not saying that humans should be allowed to act however they want, regardless of the impact on themselves or society? Should they be allowed to do whatever they want regardless of what others think of their actions? If not, why not? If you said no to either of the first two questions, then you support some sort of morality and it needs to be defined by explaining "why not" and have only contradicted a few of your previous statements. If you say yes, then you have contradicted most of what you previously said. Additionally, there's not the dichotomy that you seem to think there is between building your morality on principles and things feeling wrong. I don't know why you keep suggesting this, as if our core beliefs have nothing to do with our feelings. For example, a Christian might get said and angry when people say bad things about Jesus. An atheist might not feel anything. That doesn't mean the Christian has sat down and said "well the principles of my beliefs tell me that this should offend me, so getting offended. . . now". In fact, it feels very natural and instinctive. This doesn't mean, though, that his feelings aren't based on the principles that he shapes his beliefs by.
Actually it’s quite easy to explain how morality evolved. Social animals whose actions tended to improve the survival of the society would be selected for by natural selection. For example, those social animals who were altruistic tended to survive, whereas those who were not tended to die, so genes which produced altruistic behaviour would be passed on. This can be seen in vampire bats. They have a system by which if one doesn’t collect enough blood in the night’s hunt, others who collected more than they needed would offer them the surplus blood. Why would they do that? Because they might be in the same position next, so that altruistic system benefits the whole group. Furthermore, in the system those who do not reciprocate are expelled from the system and will certainly die, so it is in their best interest to participate. We have an reflexive emotional side to our morality from our evolutionary past, and a more recent utilitarian reasoning side to our morality. Ever get the feeling of a moral struggle/dilemma in your mind? That’s because quite literally, there is. Our reasoning tells us to do something, something that makes the most sense, something that will achieve the better results, but our emotional side cannot go through with it. For example, imagine you and a group of people are hiding from a killer, you’re holding a baby who starts to cry, which will reveal you location. Would you put your hand over the baby’s mouth, in other words, smother the child. Our utilitarian reasoning will say yes, if it saves the lives of the others then that is the better result. But our emotional side would not do it. Research has shown that those whose emotional side is damaged will make moral decision solely according to their utilitarian reasoning. In the other thread you argued that we could disobey our instincts? Here you say we have no choice but to follow them. Do you agree that it is a combination of the two, that in certain situations we have to follow our instincts while in some other situations we can utilitarian? I would suggest that human nature explain the similarities in our morality, those seemingly universal morals. For example, societies cannot exist without people so you’d be hard pressed to find a society that valued things like murder, rape, violence, etc. Any society that did would obviously die out. Those that did not, survived, and as such, the like of murder, rape and violence were instantly seen as wrong. I basically agree with the rest of your post. In acknowledging that morals are subjective, we cannot therefore define ‘correct’ morals, we can only talk of what is more desirable. Some actions tend to be universally undesirable, such as those I discussed above, but this does not mean we are talking of an objective morality. The rest are locally/culturally or individually desirable or undesirable.
It would be quite simple, wouldn't it, if all moral dilemmas were simply between our instincts and logic. As if our logical morality could always provide a nicely defined, easy to derive solution to any problem. In my example above, even though it feels natural and maybe "right" to punch someone in the nose, there is still no moral dilemma for most people. Most people would say that the moral thing to do is not punch the person in the nose. Similarly most real moral dilemmas I can think of have to do with how much value we should place on particular things, or how to objectively weight one value more than that of another. Moral dilemmas seem to exist largely within the realm of logical morality. Why are instincts and utilitarianism the only two choices? There are many people who don't base their morality on utilitarianism. Or are they just too stupid to realize that they actually are utilitarians? You had previously said there was value in doing good for the sake of doing good. In fact, you had claimed that this was why you did good, which was supposedly noble, in a way. If all you're actually doing is performing the actions that are the most desirable to you, then why is this noble? And why is it any better than your hypothetical theist who performs his actions to stay out of hell? To me, it seems like the two motivations are actually the same. Both want to avoid unpleasentness for themselves.
I have no interest in discussing it any more. We’ve both expressed our views and disagree and neither is going to agree with the other. However I’ll made one final comment with regard to this point: ”The more they see the claim as factual, the more likely they are to try and produce evidence.” Which is exactly what they do. A majority see the bible as evidence (e.g. it’s the proof of Jesus’ resurrection); and a considerable number see personal experience and anecdote as evidence (e.g. it’s the proof of prayer working, or god’s love/interaction, etc). When a theist tries to factually prove their claims to others they will almost always not turn to scientific evidence, but the fact they don’t turn to scientific evidence does not mean they don’t think they have evidence. I don’t actually disagree (and I never have) with anything you’ve said regarding how theists use faith, I just think you’re too presumptuous in saying this is how it is used, and how it should be used. You seem to be basing this conclusion entirely on your experience with a small group of liberal Christians.
You mean like social animals who routinely murder the offspring of other individuals in the group so that they are able to make sure more resources are available for their own offspring? You can make an argument for altruism, but you'll notice that it only extends as far as the relatedness goes with more distant relatives receiving less altruism and nonrelated individuals getting none. You argument is not supported by the evidence. Perhaps you should explore population genetics again.
Nowhere in my post did I say that logical reasoning can provide “nicely defined, easy to derive solution to any problem” so I really don’t know what you point is here. In fact, as I said to LJoll, I think both are required for what we would generally consider ‘normal morality’ and the research supports this. Well we may emotionally want to punch someone, but we may reason our self out of doing it. “I might get hurt myself” or “I might get in trouble with the law” we might think. The greater the emotion, the less effective the reasoning. Because these seem to be the two neuro-psychological factors in our morality: emotion and reason. The type of utilitarianism often proposed by philosophers tends to be a strict utilitarian morality, that is, a morality which it solely about reasoning the better outcome of a given situation. Under this morality what is good is only what achieves the best outcome. Who said it was “noble?” And even if it was it wouldn’t in an objective sense. Simply put: if I find X desirable, then subjectively, to me, X is good. But also, no person’s desires and more valuable than someone else’s. This was discusses in this thread: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46530 Have you not considered that the development of social systems itself might be instinctive? As social animals in large social groups, we develop systems which aid the survival of the group and species. This is not just humans; other social animals have systems which include concepts like punishment, reward, etc. Our reasoning side of the brain only developed as we started to developed complex civilisations. It’s likely that we started out with basic social systems, similar to other social animals, then as we became more complex so did the civilisation and in turn, the social systems.
And in doing so they move away from faith. Those who care more about 'faith' care less about literal fact and justification as they implicitly recognise it to be unimportant in this context. Anyway, whether religious people in general stick to the 'ideal' of faith that I am describing isn't what I'm interested in here. Do you atleast see how it can be a virtue? (I think you're right that the convo has gone stale so you don't have to post a reply, but I'd like to leave the question with you anyway.) AZ, now my convo's with Homer have reached the end, (we've kind of reached the 'agree to disagree' stage) I'll be posting that thing over the next couple of days.
This is completely wrong. While propagating our family genes is a strong basis for altruism among family groups, altruism is NOT exclusive to such groups (and even if it was, it would still provide a evolutionary basis for altruism, since we also lived in family groups in our evolutionary past.) Altruism is largely rooted in survival and this can be seen in vampire bats who do not necessarily live in family groups. The reason behind their altruism is simply survival. Read this for further information: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/mammals/explore/altruism.shtml “But why should one bat share with another? Bats within a colony are not necessarily relatives, and so there seems to be no reason why they should be so charitable. Needless to say, there is a good reason.” And this link also discusses morality: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/personalityandindividuality/morals.shtml
They hold the "evidence" on faith. i.e. the bible isn't evidence of Jesus' ressurection or miracles so it takes faith to hold it as evidence.
You said that moral dilemma resulted from a conflict between emotional and logical impulses. I was pointing out that this isn't necessarily the case, and more often than not isn't. So that's the only thing that keeps you in check in those situations? The fact that you might get in trouble? What if you're pretty sure that no one will find out? Maybe Strafio knows if Wittgenstein has a more useful context to put this in. Thank you for your spiel about utilitarianism. What does that have to do with anything? I said that utilitarianism isn't the only possible source for the logical side of morality and you responded with a definition of utilitarianism. Forgive me if I don't see the point to you rehashing what I assumed was a given. You. Although not with that word specifically. Excellent. So why do you believe "doing good for good's sake" is superior to the motive "fear of hell", as you explicitly stated earlier in this thread? Woah, woah, woah. This is totally out of left field. Have you actually stopped to think of the implications of this argument, or any justification for it? How about this: "The tallest person's desires weigh the most"? It's no less arbitrary than your statement, and it removes the copious moral quandries, like what to do in the event of conflicting desires. Although, I suppose you could have two people of the same height. Maybe then we could use weight as a tie breaker. *A* social system doesn't imply *this* social system. We can see that different cultures have very different views on certain aspects of morality, so it can't be that instincts are merely leading us to develop our specific systems of morality. This is actually not true. Homo sapiens have been around much longer than complex civilization. This is irrelevant.
Why the big speal about leaving when no one can tell the difference between your posting habits two weeks ago and your posting habits now? You should have just "left" silently and we never would have known the difference.
You'll have to forgive me if I tend to believe text books and scientific literature over the BBC. From all that I have studied, your theories are totally unsound.
Who are you responding to? It sounds like you're responding to Topher, based on your arguments about social morality, the BBC, etc., but your responses keep appearing after mine.
Sorry, AZ- yes I am responding to Topher's insistance on ignoring biological evidence in favor of touting some sort of biological ethics.
You'll have to forgive us if we trust a respected source of information over a random lady on the internet with nothing to back up her claims.
Originally Posted by tekkengod LOL! Because it's more of his teenage angst seeping through. I don't think most people believed for one second that he was going to stop attention whoring with his absurd posts slagging off religion and peoples beliefs. Typical. Tekken is the MAP drama queen.
Please explain WHY they are unsound, don't just assert! In fact, please cite some of your evidence that refutes mine. I already know you didn't read my sources because had you done so you would have clearly seen references to biologists. For example: ""These animals seem very capable of keeping track of associations over long periods of time," says Gerald Wilkinson, a zoologist at the University of Maryland. Wilkinson has also shown that bats will not share blood easily with new members of their group, suggesting that these blood-sharing associations are built up over time. This suggests that bats may be able to keep track of their blood donations. The most obvious benefit of this skill would be to detect and recognise cheats, in order to make sure that they are denied blood in future. Wilkinson suggests that blood-sharing between vampire bats may owe its origins to the extinction at the end of the last ice age of several important species of North American mammal. The disappearance of the horse, camel and giant sloth from the continent would have drastically reduced the food supply for vampire bats. These conditions may have favoured the survival of bats that shared." http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/personalityandindividuality/morals.shtml Next, a clear refutation of your claim: ”Though much altruism in nature is kin-directed, not all is: there are also many examples of animals behaving altruistically towards non-relatives, and indeed towards members of other species. Kin selection theory cannot help us understand these behaviours. The theory of reciprocal altruism, developed by Trivers (1971), is one attempt to explain the evolution of altruism among non-kin. The basic idea is straightforward: it may benefit an animal to behave altruistically towards another, if there is an expectation of the favour being returned in the future. (‘If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours’.) The cost to the animal of behaving altruistically is offset by the likelihood of this return benefit, permitting the behaviour to evolve by natural selection. For obvious reasons, this evolutionary mechanism is termed ‘reciprocal altruism’. For reciprocal altruism to work, there is no need for the two individuals to be relatives, nor even to be members of the same species. However, it is necessary that individuals should interact with each more than once, and have the ability to recognize other individuals with whom they have interacted in the past.[1] If individuals interact only once in their lifetimes and never meet again, there is obviously no possibility of return benefit, so there is nothing to be gained by behaving altruistically. However, if individuals encounter each other frequently, and are capable of identifying and punishing ‘cheaters’ who have refused to behave altruistically in the past, then reciprocal altruism can evolve. A non-altruistic cheater will have a lower fitness than an altruist because, although he does not incur the cost of behaving altruistically himself, he forfeits the return benefits too -- others will not behave altruistically towards him in the future. This evolutionary mechanism is most likely to work where animals live in relatively small groups, increasing the likelihood of multiple encounters and making cheating harder to get away with. The concept of reciprocal altruism is closely related to the Tit-for-Tat strategy in the well-known ‘Prisoner's Dilemma’ game from game theory. In this game, players interact in pairs and may adopt one of two possible strategies: cooperate (C) or defect (D). The payoffs to each player, which in this context can be thought of as increments of reproductive fitness, depend not only their own strategy but also on their opponent's. Payoff values are shown in the matrix below. (The actual numbers used in the payoff matrix are not important; it is only the inequalities that matter.)” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/ One idea for modern altruism is that is it a adaption or 'misfiring' of this previous evolutionary behaviour. So you’re wrong on two accounts: (1) kin-selection still provides us with an evolutionary basis for altruism and (2) altruism does not require interaction between relatives, or even species. For an example of this take the honey guide bird and the honey badger. The badger cannot find the honey, and the bird cannot break into the hive. So, the bird leads the badger to the honey, the badger breaks in, and they share the honey.
Well, let's see- We'd have to start with any college genetics text book, an ecology text and a good text that covers population genetics- fortunately a part of any good ecology text. The thing is, I am not making random assertions, but am refering to well documented occurances that are generally known to the point that some of this was even covered in the text books I used to teach highschool biology. Please read the following, especially the portion on "kin selection"- which, as all things, is not a universal rule. Though it is the one most widely noted in nature and one which there is evidence humans have followed in our own evolutionary and cultural paths for the most part. You are also clearly ignoring the massive collection of evidence of both males and females killing rivals' offspring over resources. Walking into an existing family, killing the male and the offspring of the male in order to force the female to mate early is sound when all you are doing is trying to spread genes. It is not sound by the confines of current morality or ethics. Neither is it morally or ethically sound to walk to your neighbor's house and slay her children so that your children will have better access to resources. Sociobiology is always something that is a bit controversial to me. While it is true that the majority of my background is in cultural anthropology, I also have almost forty hours of biological and chemical sciences under my belt. Morality and ethics is a product of culture, culture is a product of increased life span, brain size and population. The rules by which we live tend to counter our most basic biological urges so that we are able to live in groups. Religion has clearly been a huge historical element of generating morality and ethics. As has the physical environment in which any given culture is found. Your complete willingness to try to fit genetics into a cultural framework seems the worse of scientific endevors. You seem to want to work to fit the evidence to the conclusion rather then the conclusion to the evidence. As far as my experience leads, culture is the balance to our more "basic" or genetic instincts and it evolved outside the specific confines of biology- no matter that Dawkin would like to apply genetics to culture.
