On May 11 2011 22:18 adun12345 wrote: or you have to believe that it was wrong solely on the basis that you personally believe that it was wrong.
No. There is a third option without reverting to an "objective" morality: the predominant belief in your society is that it is wrong. In this case "your society" refers to the majority of the world. This is how we have an International Court of Justice and the Geneva Conventions, because the majority of the world population came together and set down a list of rules that should not be broken. However, if the majority view of the world population changes, there is a good chance we will readdress issues in International Law and other such treaties, just as countries update their internal laws as the time goes on (and individuals adjust their behaviour as they go through life: as a teenager I might have thought it acceptable to not pay a metro ticket, whereas now I frown on this behaviour).
This is admittedly an option, but it fails to explain why I, as a rational individual, ought to behave according to the rules of society. Can pure ethics provide any rationale for why I shouldn't do this? By what authority can the global community judge me?
More sympathetically, what if the majority decides for something with which you personally disagree? Suppose the majority of the world decided that slavery was an acceptable institution - would you be wrong for disagreeing with them? Individually-centric pure ethics would say of course not - you generate your own ethics, and damn anyone who says otherwise. However, community-centric ethics would say of course - you are magically beholden to conform your own personal behavior to the whims of the majority.
In short, although you are right that there is a third option, I fail to see how this option is more consistent, or more appealing.
I think my earlier post makes sense of that. Your personal code of ethics can obviously differ significantly from the majority view (for instance, fundamental moslims in -lets say- china), although human evolution has hardcoded some ways of thinking into us and it would be extreme to break a rule given by this way of thinking.
Even so, there is nothing "wrong" with that, unless you break some code of ethics which has been turned into legal code, in which case you will suffer the consequences (if caught). The same for your example: if you decide it is ethically okay to slaughter 800,000 unarmed people with machetes (or jews with a gas chamber, tutsis with machine guns or kurds with mustard gas, to name some real examples) then you are welcome to do so, but don't be surprised when the large majority of people who don't share your code of ethics cry out in rage and subject you to a fitting punishment (try you for crimes against humanity most likely).
As for your other example: if the majority population decides to revert back to the idea that slavery is ethical you are welcome to disagree with it (just as Thomas More did, except as a form of punishment for criminals, in the 15th century), just don't expect to achieve anything or even be judged to have the moral highground (except perhaps in the eyes of a future civilization when slavery has been abolished once again).
Community-centered ethics are what rules and laws are built around. Person-centered ethics are subsequent rules you personally decide to live your life by. If these conflict significantly with community-centered ethics there is a large chance you will be a social outcast, or tried as a criminal. However there is no ethical system which is inherently right or wrong, which is what an objective morality states. The universe at large does not impose some set of morals which must be adhered to, however the underlying laws of the universe do impose some restrictions on what sets of morals lead to a viable society (if wholesale slaughter is seen as ethical, the society runs a large risk of extinguishing itself).
All of that is besides my real question, though: by what right does society impose its ethical norms upon the individual? The very difference between a law and an ethical standard is that a law only has a negative aspect - obey or be punished - while an ethical standard also has a positive aspect ("it is good to act ethically"). If one seeks to depend entirely on the negative aspect, then one is no longer actually discussing pure ethics - rather, one has moved over into the realm of "legalism," in which the law is the ultimate and final arbiter of all.
The difficulty I still have with pure ethics is from whence the positive aspect of communal ethics emerges (it is good to act ethically). From an objective morality standpoint, I support the statement "it is good to act ethically" in so far as the ethics in question adhere to my understanding of the general objective moral principles, because it is good to act morally (and thus, ethically). From a pure ethics standpoint, I cannot see how one can say "it is good to act ethically." Why is this the case? What positive argument is there to be made for this position (distinct from the negative argument of, "because otherwise you will be punished")?
I have just watched the TED talk by Sam Harris posted earlier. I somewhat agree with him, but not so much with his examples. I think a good moral system (more on this later) is more to be grounded in evolution and the sociology of a society, whereas his idea is that it is a system for maximizing human happiness. However, there is a fundamental flaw in this: I have seen a lot of poverty when traveling in Africa, yet these people were extremely friendly, hospitable and above all happy. Brainscans aside, I believe people can find happiness in the most apalling conditions (and similarly, others find misery in the most ideal situations) and thus maximizing individual happiness seems like a bad benchmark for deciding whether a code of ethics is "good" or "bad". As the interviewer after Sam Harris' talk mentioned: women wearing burkas in Afghanistan are often genuinely satisfied by the fact that they have to wear a burka. Now you can refer to their deluded belief system, but who are we to say (as Sam Harris did) that their belief system is deluded?
For that reason I feel that the only "judge" of a code of ethics is: 1. our personal code of ethics (and thus majority rules) 2. time (if a code of ethics of a society is sufficiently bad, that society will dwindle under its weight)
Our personal code of ethics is partially inspired by our biology. We feel empathy, which instills in us a want for others not to experience what we would not to experience ourselves. For most this results in rules such as: 1. do not kill (because we don't want to die) 2. do not steal (because we don't want to be stolen from) 3. do not rape (because we don't want to be raped) 4. do not oppress (because we don't want to be oppressed)
Thus resulting in strong disapproval of people who slaughter 800,000 civilians with machetes, people who condone slavery, etc. Note that I am not speaking about an individual who knows it is wrong to kill his opponents, but, in his thirst to maintain power does so anyway, but people who feel genuinely morally justified in their homicidal tendencies. If a majority of your society has convinced itself that jews are not really people, gas chambers are a possible result. Similarly for black people (or just people who were beaten in war) and slavery. That in modern times we look back on history and judge these as gross aberrations and lack of ethics is simply because you and I do[\i] empathize with jews and blacks. However, the same still continues, with Osama bin Laden justifying wholescale slaughter of civilians in the twin towers in a similar manner and equally radical bible thumping protestants declaiming the Islam as a dangerous and inferior religion and thus worthy of eradication. I judge both viewpoints as wrong (or even evil) because I do feel empathy towards americans, respectively moslims, but have to acknowledge that there is no universal code that makes me right and them wrong.
All of which is perfectly fine, in as far as it goes. However, to simply say "I believe that al Qaeda is wrong, but I recognize that there is no universal objective code that makes me right and them wrong" still does not answer the basic question: do we as a society have a right to force individuals who believe in al Qaeda's ethical code to abide by our ethical code?
I don't want to immediately discount the answer "no," but I would also like to point out that we as a society nonetheless have taken action to enforce our ethical standards on members of al Qaeda, just as we have with many other divergent viewpoints. The question here is, is our attempt to enforce our ethical views on others at all justified? It seems to me that the viewpoint above will forever be limited to only judging one's own personal behavior, or to arbitrarily attempting to enforce one's own viewpoints on others [i]even though one knows that these viewpoints are entirely subjective.
Some part of it is built into us biologically. I can highly recommend Richard Dawkin's work as an illuminating read on where concepts such as altruism can come from, if not from a higher power. One clue is that we feel genuine pleasure from helping somebody in the street who we have no selfish reason to help. Our brain's reward system kicks in to give us a selfish reason for doing a "good deed". This alone should give us an indication that (societies of) humans feeling pleasure from helping other humans somehow had a leg up over (societies of) non-altruistic humans in the battle for survival. A possible reason for this is given in "The Selfish Gene", which, although quite old now, still rings true (although the end on memetics is pure speculation).
As an aside, the great difficulty I have with Dawkin's work is that he takes the above example (the brain rewards us for altruism) and therefore concludes that there is no God (I just can't fathom the logic of "Chemicals in the brain reward us for altruism, therefore there is no God;" I always feel like there are a couple of steps missing in that logic) - although his science is generally sound, his philosophy is simply abysmal (and his conflating of philosophy and science rather unforgivable, both from a scientific and philosophical standpoint).
However, a full discussion of my opinions on the soundness of Dawkin's work would take us wildly off-topic, so instead let's focus on the specific question of brain chemistry. For the question of morality, it would seem to me that this example provides perhaps more evidence for objective morality than it does for pure ethics. The premise is that all human begins are genetically hard-wired to respond to certain thoughts or actions in certain ways through the common evolutionary experiences of our ancestors. If we accept that judgments of "right" and "wrong" have a certain objective basis in human brain chemistry, then that would seem to support the concept that there are certain objective standards by which human behavior can be judged right or wrong that exist beyond either the the rational, creative effort of the individual consciousness or the quasi-democratic zeitgeist of society.
One might further induce the broader origins of this brain-chemical level reaction by suggesting that it reflects the will of a higher power, but this induction is not really necessary to suggest that there are certain standards of behavior (vague though they might be) shared by all human beings that exist beyond the ethical realm of reason and society.
I don't know where I stand on the issue, probably lean closer to subjective morals. Things we consider inhumane and immoral in one place are commonly accepted, even encouraged in others. Putting that stance aside, I have an issue with the OP. How can a murder be considered moral by anyone? The very definition of murder, at least as far as some dictionaries go, is the unjustified killing of another. How can you consider something moral if it is by definition unjustified? Maybe "killing" would be a more appropriate term.
Just to clarify, an objective morality (one which is hardwired from birth or subsequent development) does not preclude immoral behavior (obviously). It merely means we have a natural aversion to certain acts or injustices. If there is any such aversion from birth, then morality is partially objective, meaning we have an intrinsic sense in some instances of what is right and what is wrong. Of course this hardwiring could be irrational, and could have a lot of holes that need to be covered by the laws and ethics of society, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.
As way of just answering your question, I believe in Objective Morality, but also because I believe in a higher Moral Authority, a "law-giver" if you will.
However, if I did not believe in this, I guess I would still believe in objective morality in some sense, as to me, the only logically consistent alternative would be complete nihilism, or that nothing is wrong or right, because in the end, we're all dead anyway. Which is pretty absolute/objective I guess.
On May 12 2011 01:42 sambour wrote: Just to clarify, an objective morality (one which is hardwired from birth or subsequent development) does not preclude immoral behavior (obviously). It merely means we have a natural aversion to certain acts or injustices. If there is any such aversion from birth, then morality is partially objective, meaning we have an intrinsic sense in some instances of what is right and what is wrong. Of course this hardwiring could be irrational, and could have a lot of holes that need to be covered by the laws and ethics of society, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.
Except even the wiring in our brains is independent and unique for each person. We aren't all clones of each other. Therefore we won't have identical aversions. But really this argument is flawed because most aversions are conditioned by society.
EDIT: And yet ANOTHER way this argument is flawed is that emotional aversions are not the proper basis for morality. You should have an aversion to amputating a leg for instance, but sometimes it has been necessary to save a life.
Reciprocal moral behaviour might be evolutionarily based, but that doesn't make it objectively moral. For instance if I help my criminal friend escape out of prison and he then reciprocally helps me to murder someone neither of those two acts can be argued to be objectively moral even though it is reciprocal behaviour. Ultimately there is no human-independent standard of morality, that would make morality objective. Reason cannot offer a solution without dubitable assumptions. Nevertheless, moral objectivism has to be adopted to some extent in order for a successful society and legal system to exist. Pragmaticism is sometimes more important than truth on a social level. However, as for individuals, realising there are no true objective moral standards can be liberating.
On May 11 2011 15:52 VIB wrote: At the end of the day. Morals are not an absolute truth. They are a consequence of economy and politics. And change through history as the need for new morals arise.
A few centuries ago. Slavery was moral. Because there were economical-political reasons for it. As the economy changed, nowadays slavery is immoral. Likewise, nowadays assigning monopoly property laws to intellectual material is moral, because theres economic interest. As that economic interest is changing. In the future, copyright laws that forbid sharing of creative work will be immoral. Morals will always change to adjust to economics and politics.
Morals is just an illusion invented by men.
the examples are perfect, but there's another layer to the problem. morals are arbitrary and depend entirely on the society wich values them (economics and politics indeed), but they are also enforced, which gives them an objective component: if you helped a slave to escape his "master" in the XIX century, you would have been punished by the law of the time. same thing happens now, if you share mp3s and movies you may face legal consequences for it. this means that, althoug we can perfectly see how arbitrary morals are, they aren't exactly just illusions, because they have effects on the real world. from a philosophical point of view they can be viewed as arbitrary sentences, but not from a practical one. so, to answer the question, they are both: subjective and objective. subjective because there doesn't seem to be a way to find the one and only Absolut Standard of Desired Human Behavior, but objective because they are one of a kind of simbolic constructs with real effects on the world.
On May 11 2011 22:18 adun12345 wrote: or you have to believe that it was wrong solely on the basis that you personally believe that it was wrong.
No. There is a third option without reverting to an "objective" morality: the predominant belief in your society is that it is wrong. In this case "your society" refers to the majority of the world. This is how we have an International Court of Justice and the Geneva Conventions, because the majority of the world population came together and set down a list of rules that should not be broken. However, if the majority view of the world population changes, there is a good chance we will readdress issues in International Law and other such treaties, just as countries update their internal laws as the time goes on (and individuals adjust their behaviour as they go through life: as a teenager I might have thought it acceptable to not pay a metro ticket, whereas now I frown on this behaviour).
This is admittedly an option, but it fails to explain why I, as a rational individual, ought to behave according to the rules of society. Can pure ethics provide any rationale for why I shouldn't do this? By what authority can the global community judge me?
More sympathetically, what if the majority decides for something with which you personally disagree? Suppose the majority of the world decided that slavery was an acceptable institution - would you be wrong for disagreeing with them? Individually-centric pure ethics would say of course not - you generate your own ethics, and damn anyone who says otherwise. However, community-centric ethics would say of course - you are magically beholden to conform your own personal behavior to the whims of the majority.
In short, although you are right that there is a third option, I fail to see how this option is more consistent, or more appealing.
I think my earlier post makes sense of that. Your personal code of ethics can obviously differ significantly from the majority view (for instance, fundamental moslims in -lets say- china), although human evolution has hardcoded some ways of thinking into us and it would be extreme to break a rule given by this way of thinking.
Even so, there is nothing "wrong" with that, unless you break some code of ethics which has been turned into legal code, in which case you will suffer the consequences (if caught). The same for your example: if you decide it is ethically okay to slaughter 800,000 unarmed people with machetes (or jews with a gas chamber, tutsis with machine guns or kurds with mustard gas, to name some real examples) then you are welcome to do so, but don't be surprised when the large majority of people who don't share your code of ethics cry out in rage and subject you to a fitting punishment (try you for crimes against humanity most likely).
As for your other example: if the majority population decides to revert back to the idea that slavery is ethical you are welcome to disagree with it (just as Thomas More did, except as a form of punishment for criminals, in the 15th century), just don't expect to achieve anything or even be judged to have the moral highground (except perhaps in the eyes of a future civilization when slavery has been abolished once again).
Community-centered ethics are what rules and laws are built around. Person-centered ethics are subsequent rules you personally decide to live your life by. If these conflict significantly with community-centered ethics there is a large chance you will be a social outcast, or tried as a criminal. However there is no ethical system which is inherently right or wrong, which is what an objective morality states. The universe at large does not impose some set of morals which must be adhered to, however the underlying laws of the universe do impose some restrictions on what sets of morals lead to a viable society (if wholesale slaughter is seen as ethical, the society runs a large risk of extinguishing itself).
All of that is besides my real question, though: by what right does society impose its ethical norms upon the individual? The very difference between a law and an ethical standard is that a law only has a negative aspect - obey or be punished - while an ethical standard also has a positive aspect ("it is good to act ethically"). If one seeks to depend entirely on the negative aspect, then one is no longer actually discussing pure ethics - rather, one has moved over into the realm of "legalism," in which the law is the ultimate and final arbiter of all.
The difficulty I still have with pure ethics is from whence the positive aspect of communal ethics emerges (it is good to act ethically). From an objective morality standpoint, I support the statement "it is good to act ethically" in so far as the ethics in question adhere to my understanding of the general objective moral principles, because it is good to act morally (and thus, ethically). From a pure ethics standpoint, I cannot see how one can say "it is good to act ethically." Why is this the case? What positive argument is there to be made for this position (distinct from the negative argument of, "because otherwise you will be punished")?
I have just watched the TED talk by Sam Harris posted earlier. I somewhat agree with him, but not so much with his examples. I think a good moral system (more on this later) is more to be grounded in evolution and the sociology of a society, whereas his idea is that it is a system for maximizing human happiness. However, there is a fundamental flaw in this: I have seen a lot of poverty when traveling in Africa, yet these people were extremely friendly, hospitable and above all happy. Brainscans aside, I believe people can find happiness in the most apalling conditions (and similarly, others find misery in the most ideal situations) and thus maximizing individual happiness seems like a bad benchmark for deciding whether a code of ethics is "good" or "bad". As the interviewer after Sam Harris' talk mentioned: women wearing burkas in Afghanistan are often genuinely satisfied by the fact that they have to wear a burka. Now you can refer to their deluded belief system, but who are we to say (as Sam Harris did) that their belief system is deluded?
For that reason I feel that the only "judge" of a code of ethics is: 1. our personal code of ethics (and thus majority rules) 2. time (if a code of ethics of a society is sufficiently bad, that society will dwindle under its weight)
Our personal code of ethics is partially inspired by our biology. We feel empathy, which instills in us a want for others not to experience what we would not to experience ourselves. For most this results in rules such as: 1. do not kill (because we don't want to die) 2. do not steal (because we don't want to be stolen from) 3. do not rape (because we don't want to be raped) 4. do not oppress (because we don't want to be oppressed)
Thus resulting in strong disapproval of people who slaughter 800,000 civilians with machetes, people who condone slavery, etc. Note that I am not speaking about an individual who knows it is wrong to kill his opponents, but, in his thirst to maintain power does so anyway, but people who feel genuinely morally justified in their homicidal tendencies. If a majority of your society has convinced itself that jews are not really people, gas chambers are a possible result. Similarly for black people (or just people who were beaten in war) and slavery. That in modern times we look back on history and judge these as gross aberrations and lack of ethics is simply because you and I do[\i] empathize with jews and blacks. However, the same still continues, with Osama bin Laden justifying wholescale slaughter of civilians in the twin towers in a similar manner and equally radical bible thumping protestants declaiming the Islam as a dangerous and inferior religion and thus worthy of eradication. I judge both viewpoints as wrong (or even evil) because I do feel empathy towards americans, respectively moslims, but have to acknowledge that there is no universal code that makes me right and them wrong.
All of which is perfectly fine, in as far as it goes. However, to simply say "I believe that al Qaeda is wrong, but I recognize that there is no universal objective code that makes me right and them wrong" still does not answer the basic question: do we as a society have a right to force individuals who believe in al Qaeda's ethical code to abide by our ethical code?
I don't want to immediately discount the answer "no," but I would also like to point out that we as a society nonetheless have taken action to enforce our ethical standards on members of al Qaeda, just as we have with many other divergent viewpoints. The question here is, is our attempt to enforce our ethical views on others at all justified? It seems to me that the viewpoint above will forever be limited to only judging one's own personal behavior, or to arbitrarily attempting to enforce one's own viewpoints on others [i]even though one knows that these viewpoints are entirely subjective.
Well, there's the question of tribalism to consider here as well. We as "western" society want to protect our "western" way of life. Whether or not this is morally justifiable is kinda beside the point, even though there will be many people saying that we are not just protecting our lifestyle, but also a higher moral standard or some such bollocks Whether we are morally justified in attempting to spread our code of ethics to the rest of the planet is thus irrelevant (if not deeply flawed in the very asking): it is a very good tactic for protecting our code of ethics from destruction (by proponents of other codes of ethics, such as al Quaeda's).
Some part of it is built into us biologically. I can highly recommend Richard Dawkin's work as an illuminating read on where concepts such as altruism can come from, if not from a higher power. One clue is that we feel genuine pleasure from helping somebody in the street who we have no selfish reason to help. Our brain's reward system kicks in to give us a selfish reason for doing a "good deed". This alone should give us an indication that (societies of) humans feeling pleasure from helping other humans somehow had a leg up over (societies of) non-altruistic humans in the battle for survival. A possible reason for this is given in "The Selfish Gene", which, although quite old now, still rings true (although the end on memetics is pure speculation).
As an aside, the great difficulty I have with Dawkin's work is that he takes the above example (the brain rewards us for altruism) and therefore concludes that there is no God (I just can't fathom the logic of "Chemicals in the brain reward us for altruism, therefore there is no God;" I always feel like there are a couple of steps missing in that logic) - although his science is generally sound, his philosophy is simply abysmal (and his conflating of philosophy and science rather unforgivable, both from a scientific and philosophical standpoint).
Agreed. Despite being an atheist I would've preferred if he hadn't tried to mix and merge. However, the science part says that we are capable of explaining altruism without a higher power, which is the interesting part!
However, a full discussion of my opinions on the soundness of Dawkin's work would take us wildly off-topic, so instead let's focus on the specific question of brain chemistry. For the question of morality, it would seem to me that this example provides perhaps more evidence for objective morality than it does for pure ethics. The premise is that all human begins are genetically hard-wired to respond to certain thoughts or actions in certain ways through the common evolutionary experiences of our ancestors. If we accept that judgments of "right" and "wrong" have a certain objective basis in human brain chemistry, then that would seem to support the concept that there are certain objective standards by which human behavior can be judged right or wrong that exist beyond either the the rational, creative effort of the individual consciousness or the quasi-democratic zeitgeist of society.
One might further induce the broader origins of this brain-chemical level reaction by suggesting that it reflects the will of a higher power, but this induction is not really necessary to suggest that there are certain standards of behavior (vague though they might be) shared by all human beings that exist beyond the ethical realm of reason and society.
Well, there are some rules which are biologically programmed into us (and others which are socially programmed into us). However, this is hardly a definition of an objective moral code. Female praying mantises have it biologically hardcoded to eat their mates after sex: is this an objective moral code of praying mantises? If so, then moral code is species dependent. What if we evolve over a couple of thousand years into two species: a ruler human and a slave human (see plenty of distopian scifi books for similar examples, including the seminal brave new world (huxley) and the time machine (wells)): would slavery be morally justified by biology then? If we accept that "right" and "wrong" have a bias in human brain chemistry, then we have not decided it's objective, just species-wide. However, biological programming can also be overcome, just as social programming can. In the end a personal code of ethics is an amalgamy of biological, social and personal influences. That's why many people (and societies) consider it morally wrong to cheat on your husband/wife, despite there being a biological drive to do so. Following your instincts is thus not always considered ethical!
If they learned the content of the Sam Harris video and the result of the Chomsky vs Foucault debate in school, maybe we would live in a better world.
How can we have a moral and successful society if people believe any system of morals is equal to any other system you can conceive of? Because that is what subjective morality means.
There are good answers and bad answers, people. Just because it isn't all crisp clear to us yet doesn't mean it is subjective.
Someone's daughter gets raped. One response and one that is commonly seen in more primitive societies, is for the father/brothers to kill her out of shame. You think that is a perfectly fine response? Do you think that in their society the answer is different than in ours? Obviously, in our society that solution doesn't result in anything anyone would consider 'good'. But does it in theirs? No. Even in their society this is a damaging act. So why isn't it objectively immoral? You tell me why.
I think the moral challenge we all face isn't knowing what is right and wrong. It's doing the right thing when you don't want to.
One of the drawbacks of believing in objective ethics is that by consequence you will think that everyone who disagrees with you is either ignorant or immoral. And once you sufficiently lose respect for other people you will stop thinking of them as people. Not respecting other people is a major reason some of the most terrible actions are done in this world.
On May 12 2011 01:59 Acrofales wrote: Agreed. Despite being an atheist I would've preferred if he hadn't tried to mix and merge. However, the science part says that we are capable of explaining altruism without a higher power, which is the interesting part!
The problem with this interpretation of altruism is that it isn't altruism anymore. You give someone a cookie because eating it yourself wouldn't make you as happy as giving it to someone else. It is, in it's essence, a reduction of altruism to self-interest.
(Which is why so many millionaires start foundations in their own name. 'Look at me, I'm a good person!')
Simple fact is that humans are a social species. We're hardwired to do these things, and analyzing it takes away the beauty of empathic acts.
Really, I think it is dangerous to suggest that empathy is less beautiful if you understand it is a chemical or neurological process. Does chocolate taste less good because you know the molecule structure of the active ingredients?
With morality this is a dangerous idea because some day we will know it's all just brain chemistry and exactly how it works. Is empathy in the future less 'beautiful' than it is now? You suggest we have less reason to be moral in the future because it's just brain chemistry and not something either magical or mysterious.
On May 12 2011 02:09 Suisen wrote: Ooh god, I am shocked by the responses so far.
If they learned the content of the Sam Harris video and the result of the Chomsky vs Foucault debate in school, maybe we would live in a better world.
How can we have a moral and successful society if people believe any system of morals is equal to any other system you can conceive of? Because that is what subjective morality means.
There are good answers and bad answers, people. Just because it isn't all crisp clear to us yet doesn't mean it is subjective.
Except there are no good or bad answers... Only "your" answers and "my" answers. That's the whole point of this discussion. Just because you feel your morality should be the criteria for everyone on the planet doesn't make it so.
People use simplistic arguments about things like rape, because damn near everyone agrees with them. The real arguments are found in issues people disagree on, like morality towards animals to insects, the death penalty, euthanasia and so on...
Someone's daughter gets raped. One response and one that is commonly seen in more primitive societies, is for the father/brothers to kill her out of shame. You think that is a perfectly fine response? Do you think that in their society the answer is different than in ours? Obviously, in our society that solution doesn't result in anything anyone would consider 'good'. But does it in theirs? No. Even in their society this is a damaging act. So why isn't it objectively immoral? You tell me why.
Because "objectivity" means more than a consensus of subjective individuals.
You can't explain why everyone considers rape to be wrong. I can.
You think raping and not raping a person have equally fine results? You think you can't measure the suffering inflicted and the damage done to the fiber of a society if everyone just goes out and rape?
You think every society is equally pleasant to live in? You think the pleasantness of a society has nothing to do with the morality it has? The answer has nothing to do with subjective notions. The Taliban may believe it will benefit society to kill a girl that was raped. That does nothing. Now doing measurements in society is hard to do. But you can still measure the result of the action they take. And it is either good or bad for society. And what is good or bad for a society is also objective. A society where people can get along and live in harmony is always superior to one where you have the odds to be killed on sight 'just because'. This is not just an opinion or a subjective notion. It's not an issue of just humans accidentally all agreeing. It's a reality.
I think it can be shown scientifically humans have moral principles hardwired into them. Humans have universal values. That's why we have universal human rights. Arabs and Chinese have the same intrinsic urge for freedom and democracy as westerners have. Societies can suppress this but that's a different issue.
I think it can be shown that some societies are more successful than others because of how they operate. I think the ethnics of a society have an effect on this. Therefore, it is clear to show moral questions have very good answers and very bad answers. Surely you will accept that objectively bad answers can be given. There may be grey and debatable answers and the good answer may not be obvious. But still those are signs that morality is objective.
And it's not just genes and humans. If there are aliens their society will run into the same problems and their morality will share elements with ours.
I really believe everyone here that believes morality has somehow to be subjective is the victim of anti religious radical postmodernists.
On May 12 2011 02:30 Suisen wrote: You can't explain why everyone considers rape to be wrong. I can.
You think raping and not raping a person have equally fine results? You think you can't measure the suffering inflicted and the damage done to the fiber of a society if everyone just goes out and rape?
You think every society is equally pleasant to live in? You think the pleasantness of a society has nothing to do with the morality it has?
I think it can be shown scientifically humans have moral principles hardwired into them. Humans have universal values. That's why we have universal human rights. Arabs and Chinese have the same intrinsic urge for freedom and democracy as westerners have. Societies can suppress this but that's a different issue.
I think it can be shown that some societies are more successful than others because of how they operate. I think the ethnics of a society have an effect on this. Therefore, it is clear to show moral questions have very good answers and very bad answers. Surely you will accept that objectively bad answers can be given. There may be grey and debatable answers and the good answer may not be obvious. But still those are signs that morality is objective.
And it's not just genes and humans. If there are aliens their society will run into the same problems and their morality will share elements with ours.
The fact that people do commit rape already disproves your statement that humans have universal values.
And you can't simply replace the word "immoral" with the word "damaging" or harmful to society. Is amputating a leg damaging? Yes. But sometimes our logic demands it in order to save a life. You can use the same logic to advocate policies that are clearly beneficial to society, but are generally not considered moral.
None of this is black or white, and it never will be.
On May 12 2011 02:18 Suisen wrote: Analyzing things takes away the 'beauty'?
Really, I think it is dangerous to suggest that empathy is less beautiful if you understand it is a chemical or neurological process. Does chocolate taste less good because you know the molecule structure of the active ingredients?
With morality this is a dangerous idea because some day we will know it's all just brain chemistry and exactly how it works. Is empathy in the future less 'beautiful' than it is now? You suggest we have less reason to be moral in the future because it's just brain chemistry and not something either magical or mysterious.
That in itself is a subjective question because different societies and individuals have varying opinions. Since every human exists within a societal context, should individuals be held to possibly non-existent "cosmic standards" "societal standards" or their own "personal standards." Shouldn't we ask if it is subjective, or subjective to each individual person/society? Then ask if that allows each person to judge other groups based on their own customized morality? Or should we truly believe that everyone can set their own standards.
It goes both ways. We do not judge weed smokers in Copenhagen, but we do in America. Whereas we judge all murderers in all societies, regardless of if its socially acceptable (like in primitive societies). While this makes perfect sense, there is a disparity in terms of what we deem as a subjective evil and an objective evil. Which implies a cosmic morality.
Many rapists know rape is wrong. Those that don't may be mentally ill or inable to apply their sense of objective morality properly. Just because objective morality exists doesn't mean all humans have a unfailing perfect moral compass they can't disobey.
Morality is probably similar to language. Humans have the innate ability to grasp morality but it all depends on giving the right outside impulses to have it develop in a healthy way.
Subjective morality again is an extremely radical and dangerous idea. I think it is akin to religion in that is is a form of barbarism. It's a product of primitive societies. If you accept morality is subjective you can throw our universal human rights into the trash bin. It is the road back to the hell we lived in during prehistory. In fact, I don't even believe you truly believe in subjective morality. It would be impossible to function. I think it's somehow a refusal to accept 'objective morality' in the context of a debate. Either due to confusion or for some other reason. In your heart and mind you already operate knowing morality is objective.
I never said it was black and white or that it is obvious. It's not simply replacing 'immora' for 'damaging'. Learn about the golden and silver rule, how every culture independently figured them out, etc. As for amputating a leg, that's a stupid analogy I won't even try to refute. It if saves a life, how is it damaging?
On May 12 2011 01:08 Zeri wrote: You misinterpret and misrepresent the views of harris here. Harris advocates a system which minimizes suffering and maximizes human well being. Which he argues is the only thing we can possibly value if we are to value anything. I suggest reading the Moral Landscape by Harris before you engage with these ideas in this way.
The problem is you need to define human well being.
And that ends up as a circular type argument... instead of just saying "I will do this because I believe it is good" it becomes "I will do this because it increases what I believe to be human well being which I believe to be good"
Now if you say human well being consists of X, Y, and Z. all you are saying is that you believe X, Y, and Z to be Good. ie Subjective morality... maybe one you can get a lot of people to agree with, but that is still completely subjective.
Read the book, seriously. Its a great read and I won't have to restate all of Harris's arguments. Harris defines 'bad' objectively as the worst possible misery for everyone. After this distinction, the argument is no longer circular.
Misery, in and of itself, is subjective, as happiness (and I would argue that wellbeing and happiness are generally interchangeable and this was definitely so in my argument against his statements). If millions of afghani women are happy wearing a burka, who are we to say that that is due to a misguided belief system and their happiness is thus not genuine happiness! (note that I am not saying millions of afghani women are happy wearing a burka, in fact I would be quite surprised if this were the case after listening to some of the advocates for women's rights in afghanistan)
However, this simple fact brings the whole house down: if misery is not objective, how can you claim to build an objective moral code that minimizes misery (or maximizes well being, whichever you prefer)?
That is, in addition to a second problem: lets say I am a genocidal sociopath and derive pleasure from murdering people. I set about murdering everybody on the planet and, miraculously, succeed. Now social well-being is maximized as I have fulfilled my life goal and am supremely happy. I spend the rest of my life frolicking around and disecting the occasional bunny. Misery has obviously been minimized (and, in case I still feel any misery, will be further minimized when I die), but is a world with 1 genocidal maniac in it truly an optimal state for society?
Just because someone's individual experience of an emotion is subjective does not mean there is nothing we can say objectively about what was experienced. That is to say, there are objective facts to be learned about subjective experience (in the original clip linked with Harris and Dawkins Harris gets asked a question about this directly at the end).
About delusion...Harris spends many, many pages tackling the problem of delusional people, I'm not going to repeatedly tell you to read the book too much more but the short answer is that sociopaths and people who are clearly deluded simply have malfunctioning brains and they simply don't count, and as our growing understanding of the brain continues, there are already many facts (objectivity) that define people as sociopaths or delusional so we can objectively exclude them. Also, you are taking a far to individualistic approach to this argument, in your sociopath example, the well being of people in general is severely lowered. One deluded person feeling ecstasy in causing suffering is not a counter example to Harris's argument.
Really, I think it is dangerous to suggest that empathy is less beautiful if you understand it is a chemical or neurological process. Does chocolate taste less good because you know the molecule structure of the active ingredients?
With morality this is a dangerous idea because some day we will know it's all just brain chemistry and exactly how it works. Is empathy in the future less 'beautiful' than it is now? You suggest we have less reason to be moral in the future because it's just brain chemistry and not something either magical or mysterious.
I understand the scientific need to understand brain processes, and I definately agree that there is beauty to find in even the most miniscule details, but I have a problem with reducing everything down to a chemical process because it (in essence) invalidates any form of personal identity we have.
If truly everything is a result of chemicals interacting in my brain, every decision I have ever made and every decision I am ever going to make are set in stone already. They are just another equation; depending on factors I have no control over, based on thousands of years of evolution, my gene pool, etc. There is no more responsability, no more spontaneous action, no more human 'soul' (or however you want to call it).
We might get to a point where science can explain everything, but for now let me enjoy my illusion of free will ;p.
EPT
Whether we are morally justified in attempting to spread our code of ethics to the rest of the planet is thus irrelevant (if not deeply flawed in the very asking): it is a very good tactic for protecting our code of ethics from destruction (by proponents of other codes of ethics, such as al Quaeda's).
