There are a number of professed atheists in this forum. I was curious as to what sort of moral imperative atheists are beholden to when presumably no one is looking. Speaking as a theist, I am constantly cognizant that there is a God who considers what I do and is aware of what I do, even though that awareness on my part may not always result in the moral behavior which I aspire to. But let’s take a fairly mundane example — say theft. We’re talking about blatant theft in a context where one could plausibly or even likely get away with it. I affirm to you that as a Christian, or more relevantly possibly, as a theist, I would never do that. Possibly it has just as much to do with my consideration for the feelings and rights of some other individual, who has “legal” possession of said items, as it has to do with my awareness of an omniscient creator who is aware of what I’m doing and who would presumably not bless me if I violated his laws. I mean, I care about the rights of other people. And, considering other moral tableaus, those of a sexual nature for example — I would personally never consider going to a prostitute for example, in that I feel empathy for that person, and how they are degrading themselves in the sight of God, and how I would not want to contribute to their degradation, so that my own human lust would never result in me victimizing another human being in that way. So in summary, there are all sorts of constraints on my personal behavior that stem directly from my belief in God, and I am honestly curious about the inner life of professed atheists in such matters. In other words, do atheists for example, in such junctures of moral decision, only consider whether they can get away with it, i.e escape the detection of human authorities? I am just honestly curious about the inner life of atheists in such matters.
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The concept that “goodness” is an intrinsic aspect of existence is, as far as I can tell, the only concept that solves both the Euthyphro dilemma and the problem of moral relativism/subjectivty, which both end up being “all things are permissable”. If you want a morality that doesn’t logically lead to “all things are permissable”, then the concept of good as an absolute and intrinsic aspect of existence is a necessary assumption, whether that necessary goodness is grounded in what you label god, donald trump, or the flying spaghetti monster.
I would suggest that some intelligent people would find the rational consequence of “all things are permissable” an intellectually unacceptable concept. If so, then they would need to posit a worldview premise that characterizes “good” as an existential, absolute commodity – not something that is arbitrarily commanded or subjectively held as the result of particular sequences of genetics & environments.
Whether they consider god or Donald Trump the source of this existential instantiation of good is irrelevant. Under this premise, Donald Trump – nor god – can change what is good via command authority.
William,
Here’s something else that should (but apparently doesn’t) “negate your capacity for an intellectually satisfying sense of being a good person.”
You say that you don’t care whether your assumptions are true, which means you don’t care whether your moral system is correct. If you don’t care whether your moral system is correct, then you don’t care whether your actions are moral.
Good people do care about morality, but it follows logically from your statements that you don’t. Therefore you cannot enjoy “an intellectualy satisfying sense of being a good person.”
Your views are full of inconsistencies like this. You’re constantly talking about logic but never applying it.
Then, after tens of thousands of words, it’s about time you told us what that purpose was.
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Hotshoe, I was not seeing you much. If you really were gone, and not simply I was missing your comments, I’m glad to see you back.
socle:
I think William’s desire for “an intellectually satisfying sense of being a good person” is why he keeps coming here. He wants to believe that his moral system is intellectually rigorous and respectable. He knows that UD is the last place to go to get intelligent criticism, so he comes here instead.
If he could get his thinking past the smarty-pants atheist critics here, he would feel really good about it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen, so he has to keep coming back to try again. It’s an itch he needs to scratch. We keep finding more and more flaws in his thinking, which just makes the itch itchier.
William,
The Euthyphro is only a problem if you’re trying to ground your morality in God, and subjective morality does not mean that “all things are permissible”. Murder is impermissible in my moral system, yet my morality is subjective.
Atheist, subjective morality solves the problems you are fretting over.
I certainly would. Fortunately, “all things are permissible” is not a “rational consequence” of subjective morality.
“Good” doesn’t need to be absolute any more than “beautiful” does. They are useful despite being subjective.
Too bad for WJM that he can’t find any atheists who actually believe what he knows they ought to believe — the only exception being, of course, his former self.
Your error here is obvious; that I don’t care if my assumptions are true is not equivalent to not caring if my moral behavior is correct.
What makes you think I haven’t found any?
You’re not understanding the context of “all things are permissable”. It means that given a culture that endorses it or an individual that believes in it, anything can be considered moral.
I guess if all else fails, there’s always condescendingly characterizing the motivations of your opponent.
That’s amazingly nice to hear, thank you.
I think my comments yesterday and today were the first I’ve posted (anywhere) in a month or so.
I’ve read several million words of fanfic in the month. Feels odd to be writing instead of reading …
William,
Yes, it is, if you think logically. If you want your behavior to be moral, you’ll do your best to figure out what is and isn’t moral. That means basing your moral system on truths, not falsehoods. If you truly care about morality, then you’ll truly care if your assumptions are true.
I wonder why folks who would have no trouble agreeing that “beauty” is subjective have so much trouble with the evident truth that “good” is subjective.
Huh.. First time I’ve agreed with you in, maybe, ever. Well, I agree that the second paragraph is a little condescending and, given that it projects motivations not visible outside your own head, perhaps a little unwise, too.
But I think the first paragraph is balance-of-probabilities accurate based on actually reading the content of your posts here, and on knowing the shallow gene pool at UD. We all know that it’s not as if you could possibly be satisfied with their witterings, and it’s no shame on you if you admit it.
William,
All else definitely hasn’t failed. My criticisms stand, and you haven’t rebutted them. You’re welcome to try, though.
How about giving this one another shot:
William:
It’s actually not your motivations I’m criticizing, but your performance. I think it’s admirable that you want your ideas to pass muster in a critical environment. I share that motivation, which is why I like to comment at UD when the cowards there aren’t banning me.
I commend you for subjecting your ideas to critical scrutiny here at TSZ, and I wish more of the UDers were brave enough to follow suit. I’m less complimentary about your typical non-response to criticism. People here give you valuable feedback that you all too often ignore.
ETA: What I described here is my best guess in response to socle’s question about why you would want to discuss your arbitrary assumptions with others. If you disagree with my assessment and would like to set the record straight, feel free.
William,
Given a moral system, anything that is moral in that system is morally permissible, while anything that is not moral is morally impermissible. What is morally permissible differs from system to system, which is why we say that morality is subjective.
“All things are permissible” is only a problem within moral systems that proclaim that all things are permissible.
Even if objective morality actually existed, people don’t have reliable access to it. It can hardly be considered a necessity, and if it were a necessity, we’d be sunk.
hotshoe,
I think it’s mostly because they see “morality is subjective” as equivalent to “morality is a matter of taste”. They think it trivializes morality.
Also, they want the things they feel really strongly about to be objectively true, self-evident, and indisputable. If it’s objectively true, then your strong feelings about it are justified. For example, if it’s objectively true that homosexuality is evil, then you don’t have to think about it or discuss it with people who disagree. Life becomes simpler and more certain.
It can be quite dangerous when people are so certain of things that they won’t even consider a dissenting view.
Much of our moral reasoning is utilitarian. Take the Trolley Problem. Most people would save the highest number of people (even though it requires an active decision to kill someone). That’s a calculation with imperfect information, but it is a simple calculation, 5>1.
My answer to (1) was based on a principle, rather than a utilitarian calculation.
I gave you that. My morality must apply to myself. Going further than that, I am the wellspring of it. Or at least, water has collected in one place and that (myself) is an apparent (contingent) source . I gave you the fullest answers I could. Unless you are interested in engaging with the substance of them, it seems to me there is no point in further discussion.
It is important to keep the water fresh. A supply in and a flowing out!
The greater good* 😛
*good subject to revision as new information comes to light.
This whole thread has had, and I hope will continue to have, tangible effects on my thinking. One thing I love about the internet is it allows for discussion between diverse people (albeit that at this site there is a preponderance of non-believers), and that includes engagement with those with specialist knowledge, such as KN. Academics and specialists are more accessible to the average person, outside of a university, than ever before.
“just” can be such a weasel word.
Inter-subjective is also a useful concept, as already mentioned in this thread.
Aside: In terms of positive impact on society, a strong case could be made (although not one that would persuade conservatives) that The Beatles are the best band ever. However, perhaps it is not always useful to employ phrases that (also) apply to tastes (e.g “best band”). Most influential band ever. Band that has done most for human liberation.
William J. Murray,
You have once again thoroughly missed the point. Regarding genetics and upbringing as the source of the moral sense is observational – the IS, not the basis for determining how one should behave – the OUGHT.
Of course I could be wrong – the source of the moral sense could actually be our moral antennae tuning into some higher power. Again, this would be an IS, not an OUGHT. I am not telling anyone to be moral because [gene] or because [culture]. I am merely observing that these things strongly influence our moral framework, and could perfectly rationally be all the explanation required for the existence of a moral sense in humans.
The ills that you imagine (in your rather peculiar understanding of how genetics and culture influence us) are not relevant to a decision on whether it is rational to be moral. Regardless of the source, it is rational to avoid that which is distasteful and gravitate towards that which is rewarding. And by common experience, killing, lying and cheating tend to be the former, integrity, honesty and helpfulness tend to be the latter. The fact that you (and I tire of this boogeyman’s appearance in Every. Single. Debate) can conjure up someone who is oppositely wired is completely and utterly irrelevant.
Who actually advocates that view – that exterminating Jews is morally good? I’m not really obliged to justify my worldview on the actions of fictitious individuals dreamt up by your good self. It’s like saying people think it morally good to travel by bus, because it happens.
And of course, if I were to abandon atheism because of the ‘diificulty’ posed by such an individual, I would be pretty stupid. Because if “under atheism” genetics and environment are the only explanations available for people who think it morally good to exterminate Jews, all I add ‘under theism’ is the extra possibility that they are right in an absolute sense.
They are not fictitious, but a minority. What has been happening in Greece is worrying.
davehooke,
This still does not equate to them finding it morally good. The fact that people think it OK, or politically expedient, desirable or whatever, is some way off that. It’s a false dichotomy – the notion that if people do not find something morally bad, they must therefore think it morally good. It is not a binary state.
If I don’t think cheating on my wife is immoral, it does not mean that I therefore think it morally good. If I don’t think eating a sandwich is immoral, it does not mean that I think it morally good.
Yes I can. Then problem is make you understand.
No, I do not hold that irrationality lead to Bad Things. Irrational means there no bad and no good things. Subjectivity is another problem to solve once you have rationally resolved that there bad and good things.
If you try to understand metaphisic you will understand that you can assume the premises you want, the only thing you have to is stick to the premises.
You can assume “Good” is subjective But that led to that there are no moral rules. Or better there are as many moral rules as subjects able to define their own Good. . Also that leads to another conclusion if there is no other way to “Good” than our personal taste, means that there are no rational way to know “Good”. Because if were a rational way to know “Good” any rationale been will found the same “Good” and will not be any longer subjective.
Then Moral as science is usefullness and there is no atheist moral “calculus”.
Blas,
I didn’t say you did. I said
Blas,
No it doesn’t. It means an insufficient application of reason.
Since they lack identifying labels, the conclusion that there are bad and good things requires the exercise of a subjective opinion, first that it is true (even if only subjectively), and secondly, what those things are. You cannot eliminate subjectivity, although you can choose to follow a rulebook if you are so disposed. But if you start picking and choosing …
a) With that kind of calculation you can justify anything
It is better one man die to save the people.
It is worth make die 30 millions to save the revolution
It is better kill all the jewish than lost germany
b) Then you change utility calculation for principles according to what? Which is the moral “calculus” there?
Then there is not a rational. If it were the rational wouldn´t work only for you.
William,
I already explained here and here why your cavalier attitude about your assumptions shows that you don’t care about morality.
Since you’re unlikely to figure this out on your own, let me spell out some other implications of your careless attitude.
Suppose there actually is a God who cares about morality. You are effectively telling him to fuck off:
“I don’t give a crap about you or about morality. I don’t care if my assumptions about you are true, so I won’t even bother checking or trying to justify them. I’ll just look to see if they give me ‘an intellectually satisfying sense of being a good person.’ This is about me, not you. It’s about how I feel, not whether my actions are truly moral.”
Ironically, this means that if your assumptions about God and “inescapable consequences” are true, then you are actually increasing your chances of suffering those inescapable consequences!
A smarter theist would try to figure out the truth about God so she could avoid those consequences.
Your ‘moral system’ is irrational at its core, William.
Blas,
It also matters whether those premises are true. Don’t repeat William’s mistake (see my comment above).
No, it merely means that the moral rules are subjective.
See what I mean, hotshoe?
Blas,
Taste and morality are two different things. My taste tells me that flowered wallpaper is ugly, but my moral sense has no objection to it.
By the way, have you come up with an answer to my question?
keiths:
Blas:
Then go ahead and answer the question. How do you know that God is good?
That it only works for me is your misreading/assumption.
(a) Yes. Utilitarian reasoning is limited. It certainly has a use though. We use it!
(b) According to who I am and the information I have.
How do you answer those desert island questions you set?
Of course you are right, although I did take into account the other conditions Blas mentioned or implied (only two people, both healthy, no idea if they would be rescued).
But my main point in the bare “No” answer and especially in the second and third answers was to provide a response which I thought had the same value as the open questions without explanation that Blas posted.
Which gives me an excuse to recommend this wonderful exchange between Max Tegmark and Scott Aaronson about Scott’s review of Tegmark’s book Our Mathematical Universe.
Scott’s post and then the exchanges between the two of them in the comments sections are an enlightening discussion of science and the mutliverses hypothesis in their own right as well as given an example of the type of principled discussion which I think is part of any moral calculus worthy of the name (whether atheist or not).
Suppose someone from such a society said:
“In my society it is not morally wrong to torment and murder Christians. Therefore there is nothing wrong in my actions when I do so. I understand your society has different moral standards, and that you might consider my actions to be morally wrong by your standards, but I don’t see where that has any bearing on my actions.”
I think as a moral subjectivist one would have to agree calmly and have no qualms about that agreement.
But if such an attitude sticks in your craw, then maybe your are not a moral subjectivist. Or at least you alieve that you are not.
I don’t believe in absolute, eternally binding oughts the way you do.
Now explain how god’s nature or opinion on some subject entails that we ought to do something.
PS: good luck.
You can do something about that.
BruceS,
No – as a moral relativist you might. They aren’t synonyms. The observation that different individuals and societies have different standards is trivial in itself, being no different under ‘Objective’ and ‘Subjective’ models.
However, my point was that it’s not simply that someone with a particular genetic and environmental background might have no qualms about something I would consider ‘wrong’ by my standards, but that this someone is being supposed to consider it a positive moral good. And I don’t think it is legitimate to talk as if they are two sides of a coin. There are two assumed ‘bins’, one labelled ‘Moral Good’ and the other ‘Moral Bad’. It is being asserted (merely for the sake of argument) that if it is not in one bin, it MUST be in the other. Of course, there may be individuals for whom this is actually true – the Black Swans. I am not asserting that there are none. But all this “suppose you were confronted by … ” stuff gets tiresome. My point is that morality – the sense of right and wrong – can be legitimately explained by a combination of genetics and upbringing, and is not rendered any more sensible by invoking something more. That the sense is variant is certainly not a counterfactual to a biological/cultural origin. Nor am I obliged to accept variants as equivalent to my own. Religious people certainly don’t do it, so I’m not sure why they bust my chops about considering my moral choices to be ‘better’. As is often said, if I thought theirs were better, they’d be mine!
Well, I don’t believe in a God or any kind of universal substance that gives two hoots about the doings of a particular species on a particular planet, so whatever I ‘believe’ I am must fit in with that. But subjectivism does not lead me to think that ‘anything goes’. Precisely because I actually care about hurting/not hurting. Terribly hypocritical of me, I know! 😉
The only beings that give a damn are the members of that species. Parading hypothetical and real individuals who give a differential damn is little different from parading genetic polymorphisms. It does not mean that there are as many moral opinions as there are individuals to have ’em, or that they are all the same to me.
Nonetheless, there are common patterns. I’m not stuck in some tail of the distribution, as a non-murdering reasonably honest sort of chap. I’m not appealing to a consensus, but when I encounter a member of my species I have a pretty good idea what to expect.
For moral progress, that addition referenced in the second post seems to me to be inconsistent with the earlier post.
Why cannot people who are arguing for change based on expanding the moral circle be seen as arguing for progress even before that change happens?
I understand your position to be coherentist in some sense, so why couldn’t such people put forth valid arguments that the proposed moral change coheres better with the other beliefs of their society?
Is there something in the verb “see” or in the scare quotes around the second occurence of “progress” that I am missing?
On a related note, it seems to me that WJMs position is also a form a coherentism but without including any sort of universalizability in his beliefs.
Unanswered is the question of where God gets the authority to issue oughts.
And the related question of how you know you are worshipping a good god.
Thanks, I did not understand how you were making that distinction.
I understand now that you are using “subjectivist” to refer to explaining how people act. But you do not intend for that usage to bear on how they ought to act. That makes sense to me.
I’m still not clear on whether you are a moral cultural relativist. And if you are not, how you address WJMs position that atheists cannot justify being anything but moral relativists. (And I think he expects some kind of foundationalist answer, but his latest posts do confuse me about that expectation).
I am not comfortable with moral relativism, but I am still exploring the arguments which try to justify my position. I find KN’s coherentist approach useful. In fact, I think in his latest posts on meta norms he is even rejecting the validity of the type of demands that I understood WJM to be making. But I am still working through them.
I can see how you would interpret what I’ve said that way, but the problem is that you are not privvy to all of the methods and means by which I have come to the system and assumptions I now employ.
From my early teenage years until about 12 years ago, my life was all about seeking the truth of things, such as what was really morally good. Ultimately, IMO, the only “actual” thing I have to go on to establish the “reality” or “trueness” of things is my experience. The problem was that I realized that (1) there’s no way for me to know for certain that my experience was not a delusion, and (2) there’s no way to know for certain that any interpretation of that data into models was true. The history of the world is a history of discarded models meant to explain experience. Many of the models, even if untrue, were useful.
The crux of the matter was experiential data and how to best put it into a model that works for the purpose intended. One must assume that what they are experiencing is real or else there’s no value to the discussion about “what is true”. The truth of a thing depends on its reality.
When I looked at my moral experiences and examined them for a long time, and experimented with concepts of morality and “what is good” and “what is evil” (which included my work at desensitizing my empathy & conscience), my assessment about “what is real” wrt morality via my actual experience is that there are self-evidently true moral statements that are absolute – true regardless of time, culture, individual beliefs and customs, and that there are moral obligations that are absolute and damaging to the self if not adhered to, and that there are moral rights that are unalienable and apply to everyone.
IOW, these are moral truths that I experienced. All of my models must comport with what I consider to be facts or truths of my experience – inasmuch as I can ever, as a subjective being, have facts or know truths about anything. That doesn’t mean I am right, it just means that as much as I know any truth or have any factual knowledge, I know these things about morality.
After reviewing my experiential facts (remember, no assumption I hold can contradict my actual experience), I began exploring premises (assumptions) that would be reconcilable both with my experiential moral facts and with the logical ramifications that were necessary stemming from those facts, such as the existence of libertarian free will and the capacity of humans to both deny those facts and to misinterpret “what is good”.
So, you see, what I begin with are my goals (to be good & enjoy life) and things that I know to be true from my experience, inasmuch as I know anything to be true (which, I may still be wrong about), so I then find axioms that are reconcilable with those goals and facts – like building a scientific model. Whether or not the model is true is irrelevant; what it must do is logically explain/predict the facts and achieve its goals. The model must be functional, not “true”. What matters is that I have a model that helps me behave morally. Whether or not it is “true” is above my pay grade, so to speak. I’m concerned with behaving morally, not knowing the truth about what morality “is” – just as I’m concerned with behaving in concert with the effects of gravity and not with knowing what gravity truly “is”.
In addition, there is a factual aspect of my self to consider. In my experimentation wrt morality and behavior, I uncovered a very basic fact about myself: I have no capacity to care about being moral if it is subjective; if there is no god involved, or if that god is a command-authority despot. Unless a specific kind of morality exists (the natural-law sort I have described), I have no motivation to behave morally. I have no desire to serve a command-authority despot god or enjoy its rewards. I cannot force myself to serve a model of morality that contradicts my actual moral experience.
And so the consequence of the factual nature of my self, and my experience, was that no matter what morality actually was, there is only one narrow avenue (that I have been able to conceptualize) that possibly leads to my behaving morally in any sense that might be considered meaningful. Without this particular conceptualization, I’m just going to employ might makes right – that’s what I did before I found this conceptualization.
If atheism is true, then it really doesn’t matter if I’m “right” or “wrong”(whatever that would mean under atheistic morality), as long as I lead an enjoyable life. If command authority theism is true, I’m not interested in serving that system of morality regardless of the outcome. I cannot motivate myself to do something in service of that which I abhor, and I doubt that particular god would appreciate the fact that i abhor its notion of “good” and would be just going through the motions to ward off its arbitrary punishments.
So, my moral system conceptualization is what i”m left with; the only conceptualization I can come up with where I give a crap about being “good” at all, fits my experiential facts and achieves my goals. Whether or not it’s true, and whether or not how I act is actually being good, it’s either this system or might makes right.
I agree with much of you write here, William. I think many atheists do indeed feel that there’s a reasonable basis for their moral judgements and hold that others should adopt those moral perspectives.
I don’t otoh. I do hold that morals are subjective and that there’s no way for me to rationally convince anyone (your hypothetical atheist included) that something such as homosexuality isn’t immoral. All I can know is what I feel and I feel that homosexuality isn’t disgusting and thus isn’t immoral. And as such, I can’t understand why your hypothetical atheists holds such a view. Does that matter? No, it makes no difference to your atheist’s perspective that I can’t understand it. However, it does mean that as I talk with other people and find like-minded individuals who can’t explain why they feel homosexuality is disgusting and so begin to question those feelings, slowly but surely things like homosexuality swing from being societally morally repugnant to accepted. And that is what my morality tells me is right. The same thing happened to slavery; slowly but surely by sharing one’s doubts about the validity of certain feelings, evil as I define it becomes marginalized.
Evidently you are not a student of history.
I’m having trouble understanding why moral relativism is considered a pejorative.
Certainly morality — like language and government — has evolved over the millennia. All social constructs have tended to generalize from hunter gather group to tribe to nation to universal.
The standard for morality has broadened to include people who were formarly enemies or untouchables.
What falls by the wayside are those absolute rules that defined outsiders as non-humans.
On knowing whether one’s god is good, I think many Christians say there is at least a smidgen of faith involved.
Which leads me to this question: If you “know” that god is good, why do you even need a god at all? More precisely, if you make too strong of a claim that god is good, could you be implicitly putting yourself at the same level as god by “judging” him?
Robin,
But you are at least willing to admit that there is no way, under atheism, to rationally justify homosexuality as moral or immoral; it just boils down to how you feel and how society feels in general. Under atheism, behavior is either personally acceptable or it is not; it is either socially acceptable or it is not. It is entirely relative wrt to individuals and societies, and entirely subjective from person to person and from group to group.
In that sense, both A and not-A are, in principle, equally moral and immoral, It just depends on the individual and the society.
If such a system is true, I have no reason to consider morality at all, other than how I should appear to act around others in pursuit of my own personal goals.