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.
Has it occurred to you that you are appealing to something beyond “the rules of the game here”? If not, let me bring it to your attention.
You are appealing to something beyond the rules of the game here.
Let’s call them the meta-rules.
You really can’t get away from this. And if you keep appealing to meta-rules you end up in an infinite regress. Which is absurd. Irrational.
Just one reason why some self-existing ground is required, which we call God.
Well scordova posited a rather unpleasant God. My question was contingent in his belief that that God existed. I asked him why, even if he thought that God existed, why he would worship it/him.
It seems to me that demonstrating the existence of God and demonstrating that that God is good are two quite different things.
And the latter is fundamental to the current topic. If we define as “Good” that which we think God wants, we are in danger of justifying any delusion. If we recognise as being “of God” that which is good, then we need a non-divine criterion for recognising good.
And if we have such a thing, then our sense of what is good does not depend on whether we believe that a good God exists or not. Or indeed any god.
An appeal to imaginary sky fairies is rational?
Mung,
Again:
Do you long for the hits of yesteryear? Do you like your science with two big steamy helpings of theology? Will this Christmas K-Tel has you covered with “Mung Presents: Uncommon Descent’s Greatest Hits”!!!
Groan along to such classics as:
Circle that square over there – the Banettes
Gonna fishing reel you in – KF (featuring mister leathers)
Your position can’t explain – chubby swearer
You stole science from Christians – Crash Landing
Hard on for Matzke – Harry Barrington
I’m sceptical of your skepticism – the Mungettes
Buy my book – Weapon of Math Nonfunction
Google alert “Evolutuon Can’t…” – DeNews
And many many more!
Are we going to dance along to the UD classics, Mung?
I find it interesting that the self-existing ground upon which theists stand always seems to substantiate their familial teachings.
Whether the theist be a Christian, a Roman Catholic, a Muslim, a Shiit, a Mormon, a Druid, or whatever.
Some sarcasms may have died in the making of this post.
How did you arrive at the conclusion that this passage applies to every humans and not just a specific group of humans who were entering into a covenant with God at Sinai?
Nothing like ripping Scripture out of context!
I have to say that I find the “imaginary sky fairies” line a bit circular. Sure some of us don’t find the case for a god of any kind persuasive, but one of the possible interpretations of the (yes I know, fallacious, but let’s suppose it weren’t) inference of an Intelligent Designer to be that it suggests a Creatior God.
GIVEN that interpretation, I don’t think it’s “irrational” to invoke that putative God as a possible origin of our sense of morality (i.e. our sense that harming others is wrong).
What I do think is that there is missing connective argument between inferring a God and inferring that that God is Good, unless we either have an independent means of identifying what is good, or cop-out and say that Good is what God decrees. In which case we are right back into the middle of subjective judgement as to what God decrees.
Interesting. Where is this moral territory located?
“Sky fairies” is rude. I admit it.
My point is that one’s beliefs are no more compelling than one’s feelings.
I am not bound by Mung’s ground plane of being. It is a product of his upbringing and his imagination. Same for Fifth’s presuppositions.
These beliefs are real to the holder of the belief, but have no force outside the mind of the holder.
The morality derived from belief is no more objective or absolute than the gut feelings of an empathic non-believer.
They all get tossed into the political hopper along with the desires of psychopaths and schizophrenics, and ground into moral sausage.
Great!
The conclusion:
Therefore, my moral outrage directed at [insert target of moral outrage here] is justified.
Reasons for that belief, please.
It wasn’t the rudeness I was objecting to (there is actually no rule about rudeness here, in fact)! Satire is a perfectly legitimate form of argument IMO.
I just think it misses the mark in this case, because EVEN IF we grant, per arguendo, that there is enough evidence for a deity to make it not irrational to assume that such a thing exists, there is still a huge disconnect between believing in that deity and ascribing to it the origin of our sense of morality.
What if it were an evil deity who had accidentally created beings capable of discerning how evil it was?
Lizzie,
The Euthyphro is a brick wall that theists keep driving into at at 70 mph. It’s happening here, and it’s happening to fifth on the other thread.
And also faced with the question of why God’s decrees should count as objective morality if ours don’t. “Because he created us” doesn’t work, and neither does “because he’s stronger than we are”.
Mung,
Nope. And I don’t get that from your comment. I’m referring explicitly to Lizzie’s goals for the site and Erik’s agreement that “Murder, theft and honesty are clearly an issue of morality, but so are rules of a game (it concerns honesty) and etiquette (it concerns hospitality).” Are you calling those the meta-rules?
In an earlier post I asked how a theist can know that a deity is good.
Most Abrahamic believers have been exposed to the concept of dueling supernatural beings — one supposedly good and the other supposedly evil.
They tend to worship the one that tried to kill every living thing in a fit of jealous rage, the one that ordered his (no, not hers, in this case) followers to commit genocide, and such like.
Moral territories are the feelings and reactions one has to moral actions and situations. They are largely electro-chemical.
I think that misses the point. I have already pointed out that I think one can be good without regard to whether they believe in God.
The question is whether agape has any meaning without God, independent of what people think about it.
I Jn 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
It is the existence of God which grounds what love is.
Is universal accessibility a property of transcendent morality?
Mung,
Prove it.
How about the converse: whoever does know what love is knows God because God is love?
In which case, all that is at issue is what we call it.
So far, Mung, I don’t find the examples you’ve provided meet the definition of atheistic moral outrage as I understand those terms. For example, people expecting you to answer questions on this board based on this site’s set of rules (and requesting you do so) hardly approaches the threshold of a moral issue, let alone crosses it, in my book. Let’s face it, there’s no “moral obligation” on any site that actually compels anyone to respond to another poster. I suppose one could argue that such is just plain “good manners” – a la Erik’s note on etiquette being a moral issue – but I think that’s being rather too broad with the boundaries of moral issues.
Whether said requests even exemplify outrage is questionable – for instance I’ve yet to see any requests for you or any other theists to be banned or even for all your posts to be put into guano, so what exactly is the basis calling such “outrage”?
But do feel free to present your case as to how they fit the definition. Conversely, feel free to present a better example of some atheistic moral outrage and then maybe I can answer your request above.
petrushka:
Steve Wells writes:
I love circular reasons.
I agree. We all seem to have a moral code and we all seem to agree on much of what we find morally repugnant.
But then why not just do like hotshoe_ and say something like this:
Suck it, keiths.
Or try this:
You piss me off Erik!
Or this:
You’ve transgressed MY moral code, and it hurts!
That’s not what has been happening here at TSZ that led to my OP.
Why should anyone care if they have transgressed your moral code, especially given that everyone one of us here could have our very own unique moral code.
How do we get from what we think or feel to what others ought to do or not do and make it binding on them?
I would point out that mung’s definition pretty much defines most of us as non-atheists.
Is there a word for a non-atheist who is also a non-believer?
Circular reasons work because circular reasons work!
Mung,
Those are different questions to that which I was responding to:
“You transgressed my moral code.” is the reason anyone experiences moral outrage. Whether or not that reaction is irrational has nothing to do with whether or not one is an atheist.
To answer your question, people should care about transgressing another person’s moral code to the extent that the second person can provide compelling reasons to adopt that moral code or to the extent that the second person can bring force to bear on the first person in response to the transgression.
Mung,
This isn’t that hard.
You think I should obey God. That’s just a thought, but you consider it morally binding on me, even though I may disagree.
I think you should refrain from murder. That’s just a thought, but I consider it morally binding on you, even though you may disagree.
Precisely.
Imagine arguing in court that you did not have to abide by the terms of a contract because there was nothing written in the contract that stated you had to abide by the terms of the contract. Your opponent would appeal to the meta-rules of contracts.
So pointing to the site rules presupposes the existence of other rules. That’s what makes them rules. Those meta-rules are also moral in nature.
My own two copper pieces, although this was addressed to Patrick:
Empathy.
Personally, I don’t think there’s anyway to make oughts binding. Hence the reason so few people adhere to them. If, for instance, as William holds that moral laws are absolute and that defying them is no different than defying gravity (with equal absolute and consistent consequences), I dare say there would be no moral transgressions whatsoever. So far, I’ve not found any evidence to support such assertions however. Even the threat of eternal punishment in some presumed afterlife seems rather dubious and has little, if any, actual deterrent power. There are, alas, no actual examples of any punishments in any afterlife that anyone in this world can…you know…actually learn anything from. So what are you left with? Only trust as far as I can tell.
I think that’s the defining quality of moral codes – one has to trust that empathy is enough to bind someone to your moral expectations. The moment you have to use some form of force, I think you invalidate – or at the very least question – your own moral code.
So we all have our own moral territory. How then was William confusing the map with the territory?
Mung,
The meta-rules are Lizzie’s goals for the site:
Whether or not they are moral rules depends on your view of Lizzie (pbuh).
Prove it for yourself.
Mung,
Your claim, your burden of proof. You can start by proving a god or gods exist.
Only it’s not in knowing what love is.
I just did.
God is Love. Love exists. Therefore God exists.
What, you don’t like my operational definition of God?
😉
I think I get it.
Love
Therefore ground plane of existence
Therefore God
Therefore Jesus
Therefore Evangelical Association of Reformed and Congregational Christian Churches
Geometric logic. There’s no escaping it.
😀
This exchange with Allan Miller illustrates the issue:
This is erroneous. Under moral subjectivism, the basis of morality may well be the equal (and most moral subjectivists will agree, intellectually, it is), but it does not follow that the actual territory – one’s morality – is equal or that one need even act as though they are equal.
As noted above, if we all have our own moral territory, then by golly we are all gonna think our territory is the only valid one (and superior) compared to the territory of some other schmo who freely tramples on our territory, regardless of the fact that we acknowledge that said inferior moral territory came from the same place as ours. It’s pretty much that simple.
Mung,
“Jesus says God is love. I would like to change it. I would like to say love is God. When you say God is love, love is only one of the qualities of God; he may have other qualities: wisdom, justice, etcetera. To me, love is God; godliness is only one of the qualities of love. There is no other God than the fragrance of love. But the fragrance can arise only in deep meditation.”
— Osho
We have now each advanced the argument equally.
Hmmm…I like that. How ’bout:
God is evil. Evil exists. Therefore…
…Oh…wow…that…uh…hmmm…
I want to make a distinction here between implicit understanding and explicit self-understanding. (I’ve not made this distinction before, so this will be super-rough and sketchy.) What we implicitly understand can be distinct from what we explicitly understand ourselves as understanding.
As a crude example: imagine someone who thinks of himself as socially awkward and graceless, but who somehow manages to be charming and charismatic in the appropriate circumstances. He understands how to read subtle emotional cues and gestures, but he does not know that he understands, so he lacks explicit self-understanding.
Along similar lines, we can imagine someone who genuinely loves and therefore genuinely understands and knows God, but who doesn’t have the right conception of what God is. Perhaps she thinks that God is an authoritarian, genocidal monster. (Most atheists here seem to have this conception of God.) So this is someone who implicitly understands God, but doesn’t have an explicit self-understanding of herself as understanding God.
Conversely, we can imagine someone who explicitly understands herself as understanding God, but whose way of being in the world is devoid of lovingkindness for anyone too different from herself, or perhaps she is entirely egoistic in how she actually lives. In this case she explicitly understands as understanding God, but she really doesn’t.
Put in other terms, there can be atheists who are really theists, and theists who are really atheists!
lol
This is why I don’t call myself a theist anymore. I’m happy to be called a Love-ist though.
What if John was wrong?
Atheists and theists seem to be forever separated by a common mystical understanding of reality.
Robin said:
Er. I believe many of you are biological automatons that could very easily be compelled to change your views due to a particular phrase or piece of stale pizza you’ve eaten. There are also any number of reasons that embodied souls might find my arguments compelling.
I’m sure you’ll infer whatever your biological programming dictates. Or, whatever your denial requires. Who knows?
KN asks:
I don’t understand the question, sorry.
OK, let me try again with a bit less jargon.
C. S. Lewis, in the Argument from Reason, argues that physicalism is incompatible with rationality itself. The basic idea is that if a mental state is identical with a correlated physical state, and the physical state is caused by some preceding physical state, then the mental state wasn’t caused by reasoning. Reasoning looks to be, at best, epiphenomenal — all the real causal action is at the physical level.
(Though Lewis wouldn’t put it this way, one might think that if changes in behavior are explained in terms of changes in functional connectivity across neuronal populations, then there’s no work to be done in talking about reasons as to why the behavior has changed. The neurological story is the only story to tell.)
Plantinga has a similar worry about physicalism and meaning, or semantic content, which does a lot of work for him in the EAAN. On Plantinga’s view, if an organism’s behavior is determined by the nonsemantic properties of its mental states — what’s going on in the connections between neurons, for example — then the semantic properties are epiphenomenal (at best). Meaning (and so truth and falsity) have no causal role, so they can’t be shaped by natural selection, and so an organism shaped by natural selection is no more likely to have truth beliefs than false ones.
My question for you was whether you also think that physicalism is incompatible with reasoning or with meaning.
It would be useful to purge the language of the term mental state or brain state.
Kantian Naturalist,
Thanks for taking the time and effort to explain that to me. I agree that truth and falsity have no causal role under the premise of physicalism, unless someone defines physicalism some way other than I’m familiar with. The sensation or thought that a proposition is true is caused by preceding and contextual physical states. The sensation and the actual true value might coincide, but they would coincide by chance, like a broken clock and the correct time.
I don’t see how we can even hope that a haphazard sequence of caused physical states can produce a reasoning mechanism, and I don’t see how it can be tested even if we have such a hope. We **are** the haphazardly produced mechanism. Without a connection to something absolute/uncaused, I don’t see how we can be anything other than adrift in the morass of haphazardly constructed perceptions, interpretations and mechanisms.
Perhaps you have a physicalist perspective I haven’t thought of that argues otherwise?
William,
What about a non-haphazard sequence of events, shaped by natural selection over millions of years?
It’s reliability can’t be confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, if that’s what you mean. But then, the reliability of an immaterial faculty of reason also can’t be confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Whether it is physical or non-physical, we can only test our faculty of reason from the inside. If the test itself is faulty or mistaken, we can reach the wrong conclusion.
That’s precisely why I say that absolute certainty is impossible.
…
Yeah, there’s a fallacy about that.