Premise:
- A “bad state” is a state that an organism would want to change.
- A “good state” is a state that an organism seeks to achieve.
Therefore:
- A “bad action” is causing an organism to enter a state that they would want to change.
- A “good action” is helping an organism achieve a state that they don’t want to change.
Unfortunately, sometimes the good state of one organism depends on the bad state of another (or of the same organism at a different time). So for any organism (and we are probably the only ones on this planet at this time) with the capacity to weigh up actions on the basis of cui bono? (and when?), there will be frequent tension between competing claims. I suggest that our methodology for resolving these claims are what constitutes what we call our “morality”, and that our methods of agreeing on this methodology are what constitutes our justice systems. I also suggest that both arise directly from of our capacity to weigh up alternative courses of action on the basis of competing claims to the right to a “good state”, and need have nothing to do with whether or not there is a God or gods who care either.
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man’s thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,
By man’s called God.
Away, melancholy, let it goStevie Smith, “Away Melancholy“
Although of course, if there is such a God, and that God is good, she might care very deeply.
Exactly. What we do, in such circs, is to apply basic principles (e.g. “try to prevent harm”) in the light of dynamic contextual information.
No God required.
Except when they don’t, I guess. Perhaps those it doesn’t happen to are automatons.
prevent harm to who?
Rats?
Cancer cells?
Respectable folks who we deem to be like us?
peace
I guess the concept of a “thought experement” is beyond you.
What you are thinking of is a role playing game.
Yet fmm, who also claims to be operating on the basis of an objective morality, absolutely needs to know every detail about those involved.
How very strange.
I have to disagree somewhat. In this particular case nobody seems to be able to say what extra information it is that they’d need to make the decision.
I mean, a railway signalman in the position of sacrificing a stalled car or a train full of people has the same information available to them as does anyone posed the trolley problem.
As bad as it is, I think this is actually a good aspect of it. There is nothing more to know, and there would also be nothing more to know if it was actually happening. There is no time to stop and wonder about the universe created by each decision. No time to check their identity badges to see what they do for a living. Just the decision.
Jumping onto the track is usually dealt with by saying that the person you would push is exactly the right weight to prevent the other occurrence, and you are insufficient.
So I’m left wondering what contextual information is needed for William and fmm to actually say what they’d do in that specific situation.
I’d be happy to write a backstory for everyone involved if that’s what it takes?
It’s not strange at all. Because a thing is objectively existent doesn’t mean everyone will agree in their descriptions of it.
EL said:
As I have said many times, atheists can lead as moral a life as any theist, IMO. The problem comes in attempting to reconcile behavior and moral judgements with proxy-atheist premises.
Because they probably don’t know.
I’m coming at this I guess as a psychologist rather than as a (lol) philosopher. We actually give scenarios like this to subjects (in a scanner sometimes!) and manipulate details to see what make people make different decisions. It’s not my field but I do work quite closely with people whose work it is (often forensic psychologists). One interesting thing is that agency seems to matter – “Would you pull the lever to divert the trolley?” is something most people will opt not to do, while “would you stop someone else pulling the lever to divert the trolley” or “would you prevent the lever falling over the other way” is also usually something that people wouldn’t do.
And, as William points out, in real life scenarios, there are usually other options – phone someone, jump on to the trolley, through a rock onto the track, whatever, and, as I say, this is a dynamic process – what you do next depends on what happened as a result of the last thing you did.
That’s why I’m not a fan of “trolley problems” as philosophical tools (though they can tell us a lot about how brains work, and possibly how minds work too).
(Yes, I distinguish between the two, no I am not a dualist….)
More importantly, the vast majority of people agree that there is a problem to be solved i.e. that it matters whether a group of strangers gets hurt or not.
I know you have tried this before, but I invite you to try again: Can you articulate what you think the problem is? (If so, please say what you mean by “proxy-atheist”).
Then I guess we will have to wait until VR simulations pose these problems in a way where the options are constrained.
I was hoping to discuss the reasons for these differences with William and fmm once they had given their answers to the problem as posed.
If objective morality exists, how is it so easily ‘fooled’ or manipulated by the way the action is phrased, I’d ask.
But neither of them wants to play. One wants infinite knowledge that is only imparted at the moment the event happens, the other, well, perhaps he’ll summon a meteor to strike the train using the powers of positive thought or something.
If you can’t agree in the broadest of strokes about what would happen in a very general situation (5 lives for 1), then ever considered it might not even exist at all or that if it actually does exist it might as well not for all the difference it’s making?
It’s lucky we’re not defining up and down or left and right by reference to your objective morality.
It starts with those who have the most similar DNA to you. Then it extends outwards as our concept of mind develops, until one day the whole of humanity is included. Not quite there with the last bit yet. Few holdouts.
Well, exactly. But again we have the problem of distinguishing between “why should we care anyway?” from “given that we care, what should we do?”
When William and others talk about “objective morality”, I think they are mostly talking about the first.
Perhaps William could clarify.
You’d think they’d be eager to co-operate. The more hands that feel the object that is hidden away, the faster we’ll work out what it actually is. If there is an objective morality out there I’d love to know. It would be one of the most amazing things humanity has discovered.
It would change the way humanity, every human, thinks about their relationship with the universe.
So, for starters, what’s objective about it then? Is there anything William and fmm agree on?
Well, let’s say we are talking about the first thing I mentioned – our capacity to think there is even such a thing as wrong and right.
I think the argument is whether wrong and right are *real* categories of action or whether they are a delusion born of evolutionary accident.
And I think the argument goes: if I think that the sense of wrongness and rightness of my actions is merely an illusory feelings borne of my evolutionary inheritance, there’s nothing to stop me overcoming the illusion and saying “it’s OK if I murder grandma for her inheritance, it just feels bad because of my genes”, If I think they are “objectively real” categories, I might think: “hang on, if I murder grandma, despite getting her inheritance, my perception of the True Wrongness of what I did to get it is going to wreck the fun for me, in the next world, if not in this”, I might think twice.
Again, I invite William and phoodoo to comment on whether this is the gist of their argument.
EL said:
I can, and I have. Repeatedly,
Like here.
Or here
Your response has repeatedly been to define your way out of the problem – to simply define morality as a particular kind of system that supports and can be extrapolated via what is apparently your preferred “game theory” construct.
The assumed principle, though is that it is legitimate to simply define morality in a way that coincides with your preference and then argue as if you are not arguing about a morality that is, in essence, mere personal preference.
I think game theory is immoral. And language games. Hell, now that I think about it, I’m against all games [that I can’t win].
From the OP:
Genocide, for example, would be a “good state.”
Genocide, for example, would be a “bad state.”
So what would you call a state that is a “good state” for some and a “bad state” for others? A morally ambiguous state?
Be careful you don’t turn into a Platonist, or an Aristotelian. 🙂
That might leave a “bad taste.”
I should proselytize more?
😉
In a book I am reading I came across the following statement:
Is this capability to judge in advance the likely results of our actions part of what it means to be a responsible moral agent?
If so, how does that change the argument presented in the OP?
One can concoct whatever a moral code they want to live by. If there is no God, then someone who is altruistic can make a code that agrees with their altruism.
Oddly, the Mafia wanted highly moral individuals to be part of their elite clan. That may seem odd, but they were “moral” to other Mafioso’s but didn’t care about other people outside the Mafia family. Here is their code:
As far as wives being treated with respect, that meant a Mafioso wasn’t supposed to flaunt his mistress in front of his wife. They couldn’t take their mistresses out on Saturdays generally since that was wife time.
Of course the above was for the older style Mafioso when moral standards were higher, not the modern Mafiosos who have no notion of honor.
An example of honor was when Frank Costello refused to out the Mafioso who tried to kill him! It was an honor thing not to out a fellow Mafioso to the police, even if the guy tried to kill you!
Here is an example of make up your own morality:
Allan Miller,
You keep coming up with this “saying a God did it is no better than..whatever.” I think its a ridiculous point you keep trying to make.
Saying we have morals because it is a disposition that our creator wanted us to have, is an alternative explanation to, well, its an accident, but we might breed better because of it. They are two DIFFERENT explanations for why we have this feeling of universal morality.
You may think one answer is better than another, or you might think both are possibilities. But one of them happens to be right, and one is not. Neither answer may be better to you, but one is RIGHT! Some people strive to know which is right.
I would contend that virtually no one lives their life as if your explanation is the right one. No one lives their life as if morality is just a useful accident of biology (I don’t give a shit whatever semantic gymnastics you want to go through to, a biological accident is what your side deems it to be), such that ignoring the accident is akin to ignoring your desire to go paint something.
Atheists don’t really want a world that practices what they preach.
Why do you presume to speak for atheists? It doesn’t seem you spend much time reading what they say, for all the opportunity you get to meet them here.
Except we demonstrably don’t. So you can throw the rest of your “idea” out the window.
A “bad state” is a state that an organism would want to change.
A “good state” is a state that an organism seeks to achieve.
————
“Organism” may want, but it may want the wrong thing http://southpark.cc.com/clips/104426/scramble-its-brains-or-vacuum-it-out
Morality for dummies indeed.
It is a ridiculous point because the point in which it is in opposition is ridiculous. Something along the lines of “Your position cannot explain X, but ours can … God!” What kind of explanation is that?
If we really had a feeling of ‘universal morality’, there would be no debate. I have a feeling of morality – that is, certain actions strike me as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, which I can introspectively distinguish from other sensations. But it is clear that the things that strike me as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ differ even from those of relatives and others in my culture, let alone between cultures.
I would suggest there is no striving going on. You have DECIDED (or been taught by your church) which one is right, and now wish to browbeat random strangers with this ‘knowledge’.
Understanding that X has a genetic or a cultural basis makes it no less real. I don’t know what living ‘as if’ it had such a basis would even look like, but I certainly recognise it intellectually, consider it true, and don’t live ‘as if’ there is something outside human heads with an opinion on the matter.
I don’t like killing people so I don’t. This is entirely consistent with my views on the origin of the moral sense.
Of course not. Did I say they did? Jeez, some people think Natural Selection is a goddamned manifesto! I don’t lust after women, eat or sleep, ‘as if’ they are selectively favoured either. I just live life, responding to challenges as they arise, considering options and contexts without over-analysis of underlying sources. Just because you (apparently) allow the Ultimate Source to guide your ‘choices’ *** does not mean all moral agents do so too.
*** theist choice: do what God wants or he’ll squash you like a bug!
It is not. That is what you deem ‘our side’ to deem it to be.
‘Your side’ grovels to the whims of a tyrant. Is that an accurate terminology to you?
Yes, they do. I want a world where some 2000-year-old crap in a book is not given undue weight, ta very much. A world in which some objective-morality fuckwit with an AK47 is not inclined to do their Lord’s work in restaurant, concert hall or Planned Parenthood clinic. Of course you don’t endorse such actions. Your opinion on whether they are right differs from theirs. Same here.
+1
Allan Miller said:
Unfortunately, this behavior – and any behavior, as long as the person feels like it – is exactly, in principle, what the atheistic premise (“because I feel like it”) endorses: people feeling like god has commanded them to do a thing, and so it is moral and okay to do. Or people feeling like like churches are evil and so burn them down.
If atheism is true, those who believe in god and attack on his imagined command are doing exactly what atheistic morality endorses: do whatever you fee like doing, and be successful in it inasmuch as you can.
This is where your logic and worldview collide. You have no basis for considering what the theist with a gun is doing is anything other than right, because they are presumably acting on their own personal feelings in the matter. Subjective feelings cannot be applied transpersonally. You would be in error to say something like: “WJMurray loves rutabaga pie” when I do not love rhubarb pie, even if you love rhubarb pie. If I feel like voting for Trump, you have no basis for telling me it is wrong for me to vote for trump if that is what I prefer.
Your personal dislikes do not empower you to tell other people what they like or dislike. Morality, under atheism, is a subject preference. It may be immoral for you to kill someone, but you have no basis for passing judgement on whether or not it is wrong (immoral) for anyone else to do so.
This is where subjective morality becomes problematic; if people acting on their subjective likes and dislikes is what “being moral” is, then why would you prefer theists not attack innocent people in public places? They are, by subjective-morality definition, behaving morally. Apparently, as long as it serves your personal preference, you would rather they behave immorally – against their subjective, personal preference.
As phoodoo said, you do not want people actually living according to your own principle of subjective morality, because if we assume atheistic subjective morality to be true, that is necessarily exactly what those religious nuts are doing, albeit under the personal preference, physico-chemical accident-generated morality of doing it for god.
If your worldview is correct, Allan, you are observing the results of people with happenstance, physico-chemical generated “minds” doing what they prefer – doing what is, under your principle of subjective morality in brains generated by happenstance physico-chemical interactions, moral.
Yet here you are, morally outraged by the very behavior your worldview in principle must (logically) fully legitimize and endorse as utterly moral.
William J. Murray,
Regardless of whether my or your worldview is correct, such people exist. Their motivations clearly do not derive from atheism. Jihadists are clearly not living according to my view of morality. Because I’m not a relativist. This seems to be a perpetual sticking point. And it’s really not hard.
We even get the goddamned pie trope. Jeez. At least we’ve moved on from ice cream.
This is the unwitting hypocrisy of the atheist subjective-morality position; if their worldview is true, they are living in a world where happenstance physico-chemical interactions over time generates minds and beliefs and through those minds, personal preferences act out and call what they do “moral”.
Allan Miller has just said that he doesn’t want to live in that world, even while promoting the ideology that must endorse it and fighting against the only ideology that can challenge it.
William J. Murray,
I promote an ideology that endorses something that it does not endorse? Crikey – where do I sign up? Which religion should I start following? Jihadists are well known for listening to Christians. Perhaps I’ll try them.
William J. Murray,
+2
William J. Murray,
Did I mention I was not a relativist? No? I’m not a relativist.
Did I mention that objectivists have no basis for passing judgement on others either? They may think there’s a real answer. They have no basis for claiming to have it.
Also, did I mention I was not a relativist?
Allan said:
They must be, if your worldview is correct, because there is nothing else available.
Do Jihadists have minds generated by the same in-principle forces as yours (happenstance physico-chemical interactions)? Do these forces not generate beliefs and preferences? Is acting on those preferences not the very definition of subjective morality?
Whether or not they believe as you do is irrelevant, Allan, because they must by nature be operating as caused agencies doing what they prefer, just like you. Although they may not share your particular preferences, they must by the assumed fact of your worldvew exist exactly according to your view of what humans are, what minds are, and what morality is.
Where did I say you were a relativist?
Please answer these questions, Alan, or any TSZ regular who wants to:
1. In your worldview, are minds, beliefs, thoughts, preferences, etc. ultimately generated (caused) by happenstance (according to physical law and chance) physico-chemical processes?
2. Are those preferences the basis for any person’s or group’s morality?
3. If so, aren’t Jihadists actually behaving morally by derfinition, according to 1 and 2, regardless of what beliefs they happen to have?
4. If so, why would their behavior bother you, since they are behaving morally?
Where have I said you were a relativist?
You used the word hyprocricy but failed to point any out here.
That’s idiotic. The mere fact that our moral views are the product of interactions between physical and material entities does not entail that those views are therefore “the same”.
My computer is made of atoms, just like yours, but they’re not running all the same programs.
What a supremely stupid argument William.
Alan, it doesn’t really matter if you think they don’t have the real answer, shouldn’t the point be that they are acting with a valid logic, that is if they are right, they very well must do what they believe moral, whereas the atheist is being a hypocrite, if they are right, they need not follow their sense of morality, because logically they know their sense of morality could be a mistake. Respecting someone else’s right to exist isn’t necessarily the right thing to do, from an atheist point of view, if the only reason for that respect is because at some point in history it made for a better biological way to reproduce.
What if the world is too crowded, doesn’t it make sense to ignore that false sense of morality?
Yes.
Yes.
Their actions have moral consequences. They aren’t just “moral”. You need to define what is morally good and what is morally bad. But notice, you have not specified whether they are morally bad or morally good. Their actions have moral consequences, yes. And in their own minds, those actions are morally good, yes. And to me, those actions are morally bad.
Because they’re behaving morally badly.
Their actions are “moral” in the sense that they have moral implications. I.e. they have consequences for themselves and other human beings that affect their wellbeing.
But that doesn’t tell you in and of itself what those moral implications are. Saying they’re behaving “morally” is to sneak in an equivocation because you haven’t stated whether they’re morally GOOD or morally BAD.
But let me tell you something related. Supposing the Jihadis are right, supposing their god is the one true god and they’re carrying out the direct commandments of their god as that god wants it to happen. Is that a point in favor of god-given moral laws? I think not. I want nothing to do with that god.
Rumraket,
You claimed William didn’t point out the hypocrisy.
He has, but apparently you can’t get the concept of hypocrisy, as evidenced by this post.
If morality is good, then you should wish for all people to act on their morality.
We’ve had this exact same argument over and over again at TSZ, and I’m sure it’s been replicated hundreds of thousands of times in bars, cafes, and chatrooms.
Non-theists (a generic, umbrella term I use loosely) seem to agree with theists that an existential commitment to the Abrahamic Deity (or analogue thereof in non-Western religious traditions) is the only basis for accepting that there moral standards that transcend whatever is accepted by a particular culture at a particular time and place.
(I apologize for being verbose, but I am trying to be precise.)
Given this assumption, it makes sense that theists would ascribe to non-theists something like relativism or subjectivism.
What puzzles me is why any non-theists would accept this assumption. I don’t understand why any non-theists would agree that one’s belief in moral standards that transcend whatever is accepted by a particular culture (in time and space) — henceforth, “culture-transcendent norms” — is logically dependent on one’s belief in God (or something like God).
Whatever reasons there are for believing in culture-transcendent norms — and I think there are! — strike me as logically distinct from “the God question”. I’m deeply puzzled by why the non-theists here agree with our resident theists that there is such logical dependence.
Another equivocation. “Morality” (the entire subject) isn’t good. Rather, particular actions are deemed morally good or morally bad. You can’t equate the entirety of the subject itself with some particular action.
Said another way: The set is not identical with a member of the set.
Or how about an analogy I think you could agree with: The bible may be a morally good book, but that doesn’t mean you should do every action described therein (like tempting others to sin).
Do you see what I’m saying?
William J. Murray,
Everything you write portrays me as a relativist. The fact that you do not use the word does not alter that. You argue that, if my moral principles derive from anything other than an assumption of God/Divine Command, I must accept that the Jihadist/Baby-Torturer/Hitler has the same ‘right’ to consider themselves moral as me. Well … whatever ‘right’ they may have, they DO consider themselves as (or more) moral. So what? I think they are wrong. It’s really not difficult. I am the Ultimate Arbiter of all moral questions. Anything you’d like cleared up, while I’m on?
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t accept the assumption. I argue, for example, that common genetics may well explain certain ‘universals’. But this gets buried in bullshit – “oh, you think it’s all accidents then”, or “ah, so I ‘should’ rape and kill in order to get more offspring, then”.
Allan Miller,
Well, I might be able to use a different word than accidents, that accurately portrays your atheist preference of what DNA accidents is, but you don’t want to use the time to write what that word is.
Does the designer directly manipulate DNA with it’s “hands” do you know?
Morality is not in the DNA.
Yes, the DNA may well provide us with the capacity to be moral agents. However, our actual moral activity depends on what we learn in a social context, so is not dictated by DNA.