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.
692 thoughts on “What is the moral calculus of atheists”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Would you vote in favour or against allowing homosexuals the right to marry?
Indeed. Someone who thinks “our” culture has become increasingly focused on lust really needs to read about the the Greeks in the Hellenistic period or the Romans all through the empire history. One need only read a little of Paul’s admonishments to get a rather vivid idea of the kinds of “kinks” all those folks were into. Or heck…just read a bit about the Victorians…ooph!
We are certainly no more lustful than humans have ever been, though I would say that we certainly have better technology to more prominently display our fantasies.
I’d vote in favor of it.
Edit: I’d vote in favor of it, but I would prefer that government be out of the “marriage’ business altogether.
Yep. Quite so.
Yep. Hence the reason we have man-made laws and law enforcement. At any time, under any possible condition, there will always be some folks who feel differently about a given moral activity. In order to attempt to establish some sense of order and safety, we establish what is “acceptable” for the group at any given time.
I don’t know what you mean by “true” above. I would say you have every reason to consider your own feelings about certain situations, just like many Germans considered their own feelings with regard to the persecution of the Jews during WWII.
Oh, I’d consider my feelings. I just wouldn’t confuse things by referring to my feelings as “morality” or my particular inclinations as “good”.
Sure, but to what end? Human meat is not very nutritious to other humans and in fact can be quite fatal (in a really unpleasant way). At best, doing so buys the consumer a couple of days. Better to desalinate the sea water and see if there are any starfish and/or urchins to eat.
Same answer as above.
Moral? Sure, but unimaginably unlikely. Gorillas’ diets are almost entirely herbivorous – they eat only grubs, caterpillars, and termites as a “meat” source. No gorilla would even attempt to eat a human, though it might kill the human as a territorial threat. Personally, I’d give odds to the gorilla on that one.
Fair enough. So what did you mean by “true” then?
And that is demonstrably how sociopaths do behave,
BruceS,
Hmmm. I’m not sure my usage of the term was strictly what I wanted to convey anyway, since I can see how one would argue that a subjectivist can only be a relativist! But I was thinking more in terms of the way it gets applied to science: the Feyerabendian notion that even scientific ‘truths’ are societal.
There are some moral ‘norms’ that seem embedded in the species – the ones that people declare to be ‘self-evident truths’. Where there is no, or very rare, variation, one can for practical purposes regard it as ‘true’ (though not strictly self-evident), and there is little scope for relativism on a universal. But it wasn’t ‘true’ before there were people, and won’t be ‘true’ after.
But if relativism means accepting every view as equal to my own, I’m not. I don’t think all moral opinions are of equal ‘value’ (according, of course, to my own personal assessment). So I don’t accept that subjectivism obliges one to accept ‘anything goes’. Given that I advocate preferring ‘helpful’ behaviours over ‘harmful’ ones, I would obviously disagree with someone who advocated the reverse. Less inevitably, I would be at odds with someone who caused harm but claimed mandate from their moral code. That theirs is as valid to them as mine is to me is not contested. If (for example) someone caused suffering to an animal for religious reasons, I would brand that ‘wrong’. They would be perfectly entitled to tell me to get stuffed.
If morality is nothing more than subjective/relative feelings (individual or social).
Can you cite a moral law that isn’t grounded in feelings?
You can’t have it both ways. If “objective morality” exists, then it appears to (on all available evidence) frown on homosexual behaviour.
Why are you going against what you know to be true?
By “feelings”, I assume you mean subjective feelings.
IMO, no valid moral principle is grounded in subjective feelings. That’s why I don’t consider empathy to be of much use when it comes to doing what is moral.
For instance, I (and I suspect, most others) consider it immoral, in most situations, to kill others, regardless of how you feel otherwise. If the immorality of murder was grounded in feelings, then if you felt like killing someone, it would be moral. In fact, since murder is a deliberate act, you’d have to say that all murders are committed because someone felt like killing someone else, so if the moral value is held as grounded in the feelings of the person committing the act, all murders would be moral.
In other words, Keith, William holds that God is the basis of objective morality by definition.
I’
m not talking about the feelings of the acting person. I’m asking whether you can cite a moral precepot that isn’t grounded in the feelings of those affected by actions.
I’m not trying to have it “both ways”. Obviously, I reject all command-authority claims wrt morality.
My personal experience doesn’t indicate that homosexuality is immoral, so no, I don’t know it to be true. Even if it is immoral, which I doubt, the moral principle of personal liberty trumps trying to forcibly stop victimless acts of (supposed) immorality.
Sure. It’s morally wrong to indulge a child in whatever they want because their feelings will be hurt. The proper moral treatment of a child often calls for ignoring their feelings and doing what is best for them long-term. How a child feels about not getting candy every meal has nothing to do with one’s moral obligation to raise a healthy child as best as one can.
Because Iran, for example, is not a place where the received wisdom is just a different way of seeing. It is a worse world.
The only way such a state can have any stability is through censorship.
And when we act in the long term best interest of someone, how is that not grounded in feelings?
In fact, taking game theory into account, how is not acting in the long term best interest of society as a whole not grounded in feelings?
William, the most important think wrong with your calculus is that your math is simply wrong. It makes not difference how you ground your morality. Your system is irrational and logically wrong.
Cooperation is objectively and mathematically the best strategy for individuals acting entirely in their own selfish best interests. The best long term strategy.
But then if you are wishing to be logical and rational, you are probably looking at the long term.
The problem, I think, lies in how some folks relate the idea of subject “good”. As William has pointed out, there are a number of folks who seem to insist that torturing children for pleasure is always wrong. If that is the case, then “good” is not subjective to such people.
I otoh do hold that torturing children for pleasure, however unpleasant to me personally, is certainly morally ok for some folk. As such, it is a completely subject “immoral” behavior to me.
You’re missing William’s point Keith. Within a system there may be moral and immoral acts, but if morality is truly subjective (and I believe it is), then there are multiple systems. And given actually subjectivity, there will be a system somewhere that holds something like torturing children for fun as moral. Thus, across all systems, everything can be said to be permissible since no one system has any non-arbitrary superiority over any other.
Obviously, I gave you two examples that directly answered your challenge. If you’re going to torture the scope of “grounded in feeling” into future, entire-society, game-theory ambiguity even though neither the parent nor the child is considering such ideas at the time, then there’s no example I can give that you cannot, through some rube-goldberg path, connect ambiguously to “feelings” if you so wish.
KN? Are you reading this? Didn’t you insinuate that I hadn’t found any atheists that actually think this way? Hello? Is this thing on?
Unless those self-interests do not coincide with any outcomes achievable via cooperation.
As long as we are careful in what “norms” means, then I agree. I think we are OK if we take “norms” in this context to mean how evolution has shaped what our emotions tell us is right. But if our reason differs after following a principled process, then reason should dictate the norm in the sense of ought-to morality. An example would be evolutionary versus reasoned behavior towards strangers.
A scientifically informed morality must recognize that fact of our evolutionary starting point and understand what it means for any proposed moral change. For example, hard determinists who say the concept of moral responsibility is obsolete and we should no longer apply it in our laws are on dangerous ground because concepts like fairness and retribution for unsocial behavior are built into people at birth.
If I change the word “animal” to “person”*, I don’t think they are “entitled” to tell you to get stuffed. Not if “entitled” means morally right. On this, both WJM and KN seems to agree.
“there are moral rights that are unalienable and apply to everyone” — WJM
“I would still want to say here that there are ‘matters of fact’ that make some moral judgments better than others — namely, whether the moral judgment belongs to a family of moral judgments and moral practices that tend to promote human flourishing” –KN
Of course, they don’t agree on why these statement are true!
————–
* I suggested the change to “persons” to make the case simpler, not to suggest causing suffering to animals was morally acceptable.
Ah. Ok.
It’s going to be important here to distinguish between different kinds of questions here.
“Empathy!” is probably a decent answer to the question, “in terms of which human emotion can we best explain how the moral point of view is connected up with motivational states of the individuals who take up that point of view?”
That’s very different explaining the origins of morality, its functions in human life, or — and this is the big one, obviously — “is the question, “which morality is the best one for us?” a question that has an intelligible answer?”
WJM, it seems to me, wants to say that the terms “subjectivism” and “objectivism” line up with “no” and “yes,” respectively to that last question. A “subjectivist” is someone who thinks that it doesn’t make sense to ask which morality is best for us, since there’s no standpoint from which such an assessment could be conducted. And an “objectivist” is someone who thinks that there is such an standpoint.
And from there WJM needs only point out that (1) everyone acts like they are committed to objectivism, whatever they profess; (2) the commitment to objectivism is only fully intelligible if one is a theist; (3) hence atheists cannot justify — not even to themselves — their own presumption towards objectivism.
Most of WJM’s critics here — including myself — have focused on how WJM himself is implicitly committed to subjectivism. And that’s interesting. But I think that something has gone badly wrong in the argument itself, because it relies on equivocation between different sense of “objective”.
In one sense, I think that morality is not objective, because I do not think that our moral norms correspond to any deep truths about reality that would be the case even if there were no human beings. (So physics is objective in a way that ethics is not.)
But ethics could be objective in the way that, say, anthropology is objective — what makes anthropology objective isn’t that its claims would still be true even if there were no human beings, but rather that its claims are responsive to facts about how human beings are. Likewise, what makes an ethical framework rationally acceptable — I do not say “true,” because I want to maintain the distinction between scientific vocabulary as a set of “is”-claims and a moral vocabulary as a set of “ought”-claims — are facts about human beings. By this I have in mind such things as, under what conditions do they flourish — how do trauma and abuse affect cognitive and emotional development; how important is having contact with nature to human well-being; what does inequality do to human beings; what does violence to do human beings; and so on.
I take that there are facts about what natural and social conditions promote and hinder human flourishing, and that the rational acceptability of a moral framework depends on whether it takes these facts into account with regard to what one ought to do.
No doubt, WJM would push the question, “why should I care about the flourishing of others?” I don’t think that’s the right question. In fact, I think that question is intelligible in light of further assumptions which I think are quite false.
The intelligibility of this question, it seems to me, invites us to imagine that one is a rational being independent of others, who is motivated by rational self-interest, and then some sort of rational argument needs to be brought into play as to why she ought to enlarge her sympathies or outlook so as to care for others. So we can imagine one inhabiting the rational space, and then being brought into the moral space through a rational move, an appeal to self-interest.
And I think that is a completely false theory of human nature.
Instead, I think that the very process of bringing up a child in the world and initiating her into a cultural tradition introduces her to both the rational and the moral more or less simultaneously. I don’t think that the moral and the rational can be as far apart as the ethical egoists and social contract theorists maintain. (Even if they are not quite as closely fused together as Plato and Aristotle suggested.) I say that because both the rational and the moral are species of a genus: the normative.
The differences lie in the criteria — a system of moral norms is going to be better or worse for us, and so more or less rationally acceptable, depending on how well it accommodates very general facts about the natural and social conditions of human flourishing. Whereas a system of epistemic norms is going to be better and worse for us, and so more or less rationally acceptable, depending on how well it guides successful inquiry and thereby tends to lead to new truths about how the world really is.
On these grounds, I think of myself as having an objective conception of morality. I can see why WJM would disagree with me — because he uses “objective” and “absolute” as synonyms (and thinks it an error to do otherwise), whereas I do not use them as synonyms (and think that conflating them causes great confusion).
Exactly. One of the major things about WJM’s approach that really irks me is that because I don’t share his conception of what makes those statements true, he thinks I’m not rationally entitled to make such statements at all.
Well, to be fair, I’m not technically an atheist. But I think you’re point holds nonetheless.
You so-called examples are the usual ones in which a sociopath is free to do anything. No one contests the notion that sociopaths do things that hurt people.
Your larger claim is that a sociopath could rationally construct a moral system in which he is free to do anything. I deny that this is true.
I think it is worth asking why this question matters.
That means that are your rules, valids only for you or for wnats to share that rules. Then morality is matter of opinion not knowledge.
Taste, opinion, feeling, sensation use the word that you want. There is not a logical reason behind.
Show me the logic that would make work for me too.
Does all of biology correspond to deep truths about reality that would be the case even if there were no living things?
Would the second law of thermodynamics have any meaning in a one particle universe?
Would climate science correspond to deep truths about reality if there were no planets?
Or planet formation if there were no gravity?
keiths:
William:
William,
To behave morally, you have to have an idea of what is and isn’t moral. If you don’t care whether your “model” is true, yet you allow it to influence your moral behavior, then you don’t care whether your behavior is moral. It’s simple logic.
Your stated goal of acquiring ‘an intellectually satisfying sense of being a good person’ is a psychological goal, not a moral one. You just want to feel good about yourself, and the model helps you do that. It’s mental masturbation.
If you really wanted to behave morally, you would come up with a model that was as true as you could make it, not one that merely makes you feel good about yourself.
But it is not rational use as moral rule a limited rule of morality. When you use it and when you do not use it? Which are his limits? How you define utility in order to avoid justify any kind of tirans?
So moral is subjective, I can say according to who I am and the information I have it is moral I throw a bomb in central park.
How do you answer those desert island questions you set?
a) No, I have no right to take away the life of other human.
b) Yes, I have right to use an animal to improve my chances of live.
c) No, apes have not consciussnes of Good and Bad and do not have free will so there acts can´t be qulified as immorals.
Could do, but also you could read for yourself what already exists. I could keep answering your questions but your posts don’t demonstrate much interest in the answers.
Can you? Honestly?
keiths:
Blas:
There’s also no logical reason behind your belief that we should obey God, but not Stephen Colbert. At least, you haven’t supplied one yet. Do you have one?
Off course, why not. Why terrorists could ? Do you think they acted against what they think morally correct?
Ok, may be theist morality is irrational too, but atheist morality is irrational, No calculus.
And, as usual, your logic is simply flawed.
I don’t care that the model is true because I have no way of knowing if it is true. I can only know whether or not it is functional/effective.
All I can reasonably care about is if the model works and is reconcilable with what I experience as moral facts, and if its predictions (influences) guide me safely through those moral pathways I can experience as correct or incorrect. Since it is the only model that accommodates what I know to be true about morality, it is the model I must adopt. So far, that model has not guided me into any decisions that proved morally incorrect as far as what I can experientially know about morality.
William,
Being unable to come up with a true model is one thing. Not caring whether your model is true is another.
If you don’t care whether your model is true (and you tell us you don’t), then you don’t care whether your behavior is truly moral. You just want to feel that it is, so that you can acquire “an intellectually satisfying sense of being a good person”.
If you did care about moral behavior, then you would strive to make your model as true as possible. That would necessarily include questioning your assumptions and listening to criticisms.
davehooke,
I would say “no”, to all those questions. And that clearly doesn’t invalidate the objectivity of climate science or thermodynamics. Though there is a counterfactual element to these theories. The second law of thermodynamics tells us how a system of particles would evolve if there is more than one of them; general relativity tells us how a system of bodies would evolve if more than one of them had mass; and cognitive neuroscience tell us how brains would encode information about their environments, if there were any.
I think that this counterfactual dimension to the idea of objectivity is fascinating. For one thing, it tells me that a being that cannot engage in contrary-to-fact reasoning lacks a grasp on the concept of objectivity.
Be that as it may . . . what I was urging was that the objectivity of ethics isn’t mitigated or refuted by the thought that the reasonableness of an ethical framework depends on how well it accommodates facts about the conditions of human flourishing. (And perhaps the flourishing of other animals as well.)
Aristotle seemed to think that an ethical framework just was those facts, and this might have seemed plausible in light of his teleological biology and psychology. Owen Flanagan, in his “Ethics as Human Ecology” approach, seems to accept this as well. But I worry that this is ultimately a version of the Myth of the Given, only one that looks to Nature for the meta-norm.
So I would prefer to say that reasonableness of a framework of moral norms, when we are comparing the different moral frameworks competing for adoption in the public sphere, depends in large part on whether the framework accommodates the relevant facts about human flourishing rather than the framework itself being a theory of human flourishing.
Put otherwise, Aristotle doesn’t distinguish between ethics and psychology; he’s innocent of Humean and Kantian worries about the is-ought problem. We don’t have that luxury; we need to find a way to a postlapsarian counterpart of Aristotle’s innocence, in which facts about human flourishing are relevant for adoption of a moral framework but not identical with that framework.
You are apparently skimming over what I write in your mad dash to invent logical flaws – read for comprehension. I said that I have direct experience concerning what is moral and what is not. The model is constructed so as to not contradict what I already know about morality and so that it successfully predicts future experiences in moral situations. The model DOES NOT DEFINE FOR ME WHAT IS MORAL; EXPERIENCE DOES. The model is used solely as a premise that produces a working model that is a theoretical means of predicting my moral experience going forward. If the model doesn’t work – IOW, advises me to do X, then I do X, and discover via experience that it is immoral, then I will have to ditch the model.
Well then if you do not have absolute, eternally binding oughts, nobody has, then morality only can describe the variety of personal oughts that exists.
I´ll try a short explanation with my own words. There is plenty of bibliography.
Premise one: Exists a not contigent been that is the cause of the reality including myself. We call it God.
Premise two: I´m free to choose what I do.
There actions that I do that produce happyness to me or others and others that produce pain or dislike to others. I call them good actions and bad actions. If I can give the attribute of good to an action I have to admit the existance of goodness. If goodness exists, it is caused by God as everything else. Then if God made the goodness, and I want to make good actions I have to do what God says is good. If i do not do what God says is good I´m not doing what I want to do against premise two.
The dangers of demonisation of the other and unexaminable Truths.
What do you mean by true ? How do you determine that your model is true?
blockquote cite=”comment-45171″>
keiths:
If you did care about moral behavior, then you would strive to make your model as true as possible.That would necessarily include questioning your assumptions and listening to criticisms.
Strange critique coming from an atheist that have only aproximates models of morality.
Blas,
The same way you determine that any model is true. You examine it to see if it’s consistent, and you compare its predictions against observations.
keiths:
Blas:
Not at all. I’m not saying that William’s model must be perfectly true or accurate. I’m saying that if he cared about moral behavior, then he would try to make his model accurate.
Instead, he writes things like this: