At Evolution News and Views, David Klinghoffer presents a challenge:
Man needs meaning. We crave it, especially when faced with adversity. I challenge any Darwinist readers to write some comments down that would be suitable, not laughable, in the context of speaking to people who have lived through an event like Monday’s bombing. By all means, let me know what you come up with.
Leaving aside Klinghoffer’s conflation of “Darwinism” with atheism, and reading it as a challenge for those of us who do not believe in a supernatural deity or an afterlife (which would include me), and despite lacking the eloquence of the speakers Klinghoffer refers to, let me offer some thoughts, not on Monday’s bombing, specifically, but on violent death in general, which probably touches us all, at some time. Too many lives end far too soon:
We have one life, and it is precious, and the lives of those we love are more precious to us than our own. Even timely death leaves a void in the lives of those left, but the gap left by violent death is ragged, the raw end of hopes and plans and dreams and possibilities. Death is the end of options, and violent death is the smashing of those options; Death itself has no meaning. But our lives and actions have meaning. We mean things, we do things, we act with intention, and our acts ripple onwards, changing the courses of other lives, as our lives are changed in return. And more powerful than the ripples of evil acts are acts of love, kindness, generosity, and imagination. Like the butterfly in Peking that can cause a hurricane in New York, a child’s smile can outlive us all. Good acts are not undone by death, even violent death. We have one life, and it is precious, and no act of violence can destroy its worth.
By controlling the law.
Ahhh, but you do! And that’s the problem. Here’s your post detailing your argument:
The part above, “…if there is an objective morality…it must be a quality of “god”. That’s a premise from theism, Wiliam. It’s what started you down this path of looking for a rationally coherent morality in the first place. You stated this in your earlier posts.
So, your conclusion – a rational coherent morality – assumes your premise – “is a quality of god “. And around and around it goes.
Whether or not something is a “rational basis” for a belief system is determined by the resulting rational coherency of the system. How would anyone know if Darwinism or Theism was a “rational basis” before examining what each premise logically implies?
I don’t see how Darwinism (atheistic materialism) can produce (meaning, logically implicate towards conclusion) a logically coherent and meaningful moral system.
So that is three times you’ve refused to answer the question. Correct me if I am wrong:
1. You are claiming that morality is DEFINED as altruism.
2. Ethics, under your moral definition of morality (altruism), is figuring out the what benefits and harms people, because “benefit and harm” are the essential commodities that matter under Altruism-as-Morality.
3. You set up laws or rules based on these ethics, which are extrapolated from your morality, which is defined as altruism.
4. I disagree that a rule is moral.
5. You argue that the rule is indeed moral, and launch into an explanation of the ethical justifications for the rule.
6. Those ethical justifications are rooted in the assmption that morality = altruism.
7. My disagreement not with your ethical arguments for the rule, but the basis for the rule: altruism. I disagree that altruism = morality. I disagree that morality = “what would serve me best in getting along with others in a society.” I disagree that morality has anything whatsoever to do with how individuals in a society can best get along. ALL of your above attempts to persuade me assume the very thing I’m objecting to in the first place; that your concept of “what morality is”, is true.
8. Now, since I object to your definition of what morality is in the first place, by what principle or authority do you consider me “wrong” and subject me to enforcement of the rules that exist under your moral paradigm?
The law is what I have challenged. Are you saying that laws are morally immune to challenge?
No, it’s not. It’s an argument I made in this thread, that the only possible way an absolute morality can exist is in the mind of a sentient entity that created us for a purpose (etc., refer to prior posts), and so it would be reasonable to call that being “god”.
Feel free to make a case how an absolute morality can exist without an entity that can reasonably be called “god”, and you will have falsified at least the portion of my argument that concludes that theism is a necessary aspect of any logically coherent and meaningful moral system.
Laws are amenable to rational argument. Arguing from a perspective that laws should reflect some “objective morality” will fail as you are unable to describe, only interpret, that “objective morality”.
Over time morals change. To wit, gay marriage.
The laws forbidding that have been changed. Law reflects morality.
Were your claims to even be partially true laws would never change as morality would never change.
And as that’s not true, or rather there is no evidence supporting it, it follows there is no absolute morality. Case closed.
Except that’s simply not true. There are entire countries that consider themselves secular. Are you saying that everybody in those countries does not have a logically coherent and meaningful moral system?
Except, it seems, that your objective morality might not exist.
Original habitants of nordamerica take an altruistic approach with pioneers that is remember nowadays with thakgivings day. But the result of that altruistic approach was that more pioneers come and killed almost all the original population. Was good to be altruistic?
Why don’t you go and set up home with William, who does not have an altruistic bone in his body?
Then when one of you cannot find the rent one month we’ll see how that goes.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
I’m beginning to think I don’t actually know what you mean by “rational”.
I don’t see any reason it can’t. We can reason. We are capable of discerning want from ought. We are capable of constructing an ethical system based on the assumption that there are principles that should guide our actions; we are capable of deciding rationally on what those principles should be.
I haven’t, William. I answered it most willingly. Clearly you don’t like my answer, but please don’t accuse me of “refusing” to answer it.
I am prepared (as I indicated) to stipulate that you could simply define morality as what we “ought” to do (having belatedly remembered Ayn Rand); previously I’d distinguished, if you remember, between Ought_self and Ought_other. But if you want to include Ought_self as a candidate for the term “morality” (as Rand does) then we can just stick with ought – conflict between immediate benefit and benefit to either oneself in the future, or to another person. I wouldn’t – I don’t think anybody, except possibly Rand, uses the term that way, but she does, so I guess we should include her.
Ethics would then become figuring out what benefits and harms whoever is mandated to be benefited and/or harmed under your oughts (future self; others).
Based on what we think constitutes harm and benefit, yes. And if your oughts are entirely selfish, your ethics would be about what constituted your own future benefit.
Depends how you are using the adjective. Obviously a rule isn’t a moral agent. It can be about morality (“do as you would be done by”), in which case it’s a moral rule, unlike a rule of thumb, for instance, which probably mostly isn’t.
Not sure what rule you are talking about here.
Well, I’m arguing that morality based on altruism is the rational basis for a morality for a social species, yes. I’m not assuming it. I was assuming it was how we use the word as human beings. But given that a few people don’t, I’m now arguing that it has one possible contender, ought-as-self-discipline, but that that is a a counter-productive moral basis for a social group.
OK. I’m still not at all clear what your objection is, but let me try to tease out some strands here, and perhaps state a slightly different, maybe stronger, argument:
We have at least established, I think, that morality is about “oughts”. I hope we have also established that “oughts” arise when what suits us best in the here and now conflicts with what may suit others, or ourselves at another time, right?
(If not, say so here :))
In other words, between immediate and more distal goals. So let’s define, for the purposes of this discussion, “morality” as a principle, or set of principles, that tells us when we “ought” to do not what we want, now, but what will achieve a more distal goal; how, in other words, to balance distal goals against proximal goals.
So we have three categories of goals categories, one proximal (self, now); and two distal (self, future; and others at any time), and so we have a choice of two principles on which to base our morality – our oughtality, if you like: altruism; or our own future.
I am arguing that of those two, the first, altruism, ultimately ensures the second, so is the more rational choice of morality.
And having chosen our moral system, out of two contenders, we are now set for constructing an ethical system based on that principle: how, in scenario X, do we minimise harm/maximise benefit to all?
The principle that for a social species, a morality based on ought_self is ultimately self-contradictory/counter-productive. But an ought_others morality only works if it is a collective morality. The prisoners can only escape their dilemma by agreeing to the same principle. It’s ultimately the principle that benefits them both, but only, paradoxically, if they look beyond their own self-interest.
Well, they didn’t consider that the original population counted as the “others” to whom they owed a moral duty. Their altruism was bounded, as we can now see.
I’m not sure what you mean by an “absolute morality”, William, and what it would mean for one to “exist”. But the idea of reciprocity and cheater-detection seems pretty well built into us as a social species, so it seems to me it exists, and is not arbitrary.
Which is good enough for me, I think. It’s certainly coherent, because it makes for a society in which we can all flourish, even those of us who don’t give a damn.
Sorry, do you mean that the problem was that eurpeans immigrants didn´t see the americans as “others”?
My quastion was if was correct for americans be altruistic.
Of course not! They should have let them starve to death!
That, presumably, would have been the moral thing to do.
Oh, wait now.
Even assuming an absolute morality stemming from what we’re for now calling a god, how is that morality made known to its creation?
If it has to be through humans, surely it’s already potentially corrupted.
“So we have three categories of goals categories, one proximal (self, now); and two distal (self, future; and others at any time), and so we have a choice of two principles on which to base our morality – our oughtality, if you like: altruism; or our own future.”
No, Lizzie you have to define your goal and if you have more than one you have to chose wich order of importance will give to them. Then when you have your goal decided we “ought to” do what make us reach our princial goal. Altruism will be an “ought to” only if allow us to reach our goal.
William has already answered those questions 😛
I suggested he creates a Wiki.
William,
Statements like this are the reason I keep asking you to slow down, take a break, and really think things through.
You are assuming that the only possible moral error is to deviate from the One True Objective Morality. It’s not. There are at least three other possibilities:
1. If a person’s moral premises or axioms are internally inconsistent, that is a moral error.
2. If the implications of a person’s moral axioms clash with his moral intuition, that is a moral error.
3. Even if a person’s moral axioms are consistent and in line with his moral intuition, he could still deceive himself into accepting a moral proposition that does not follow from his premises, thus committing a moral error.
William,
So if we were created, but not for a purpose, then objective morality wouldn’t exist?
Couldn’t objective morality reside in the mind of an entity that didn’t create us? If not, why not?
And you never answered the Euthyphro-ish question I asked earlier in the thread:
As I described the dilemma:
From what I can tell, a big part of the problem here is that Lizzie and William are using “objective” in incompatible ways. Lizzie is using “objective” to mean something like, “independent of any particular person’s beliefs or desires.” So by this usage, our best scientific theories would count as “objective” just because their warrant doesn’t depend on what any particular person believes about them.
By contrast, William is using “objective” to mean “absolute,” in the sense of “unchanging or unfalsifiable”. So by William’s usage, no scientific theory could be objective, since any scientific theory could be discarded if sufficient evidence came along. William, as I understand it, wants foundational moral principles that have the indefeasible or unfalsifiable status of logical principles. So when he says that the belief in objective morality is a reasonable belief only if one believes in God, I take him to be saying that a belief in an absolute, unchanging, and self-evident moral principles is reasonable only if one believes in an absolute and unchanging legislator (?) or source (?) for those moral principles.
Consequently, all William has been insisting on here is this: if one does not believe that there’s an unchanging, absolute source or grounding for moral principles, then it is irrational to believe that there are any moral principles that are absolute and unchanging.
(All the rest of the wrangling amounts to one person’s modus ponens being another person’s modus tollens.)
However, if one thinks that moral principles are objective in the sense that our best scientific theories are objective, rather than objective in the sense that logical principles are absolute, then the rest of the account will differ accordingly.
I think you’ve nailed it, KN. Thanks.
As far as I know, Liz and I resolved our “objective” and “absolute” issue far up in the thread, where Liz brought it up and I then started using the term “absolute” to conform to her meaning of the words.
Every summary or paraphrase of my position that KN offered is wrong. What I have said probably about 50 times in this as the point of my argument: if one does not believe that there’s an unchanging, absolute source or grounding for moral principles, then one doesn’t have a rationally coherent, meaningful morality. I do not equate a rationally coherent, meaningful morality with a necessarily absolute-based morality; I reason that the latter is necessary for the former.
What Liz has offered is a rationally coherent basis for organizing a structure of social rules. In her mind, there is no difference between that and morality. Altruism is not the only concept around which a society can be logically ordered. Obeyance to god as decreed by authority is another such concept, one that has proven quite successful. Obeyance to the state has been shown to be quite effective at ordering societies.
Notice her answer to my question #8, where I asked:
And she responded:
Self contradictory/counterproductive for what end? It is only (putatively) self-contradictory, and counter-productive, for the end that she assumes. Liz is countering my challenge against her desired end (a peaceful, cooperative, least-harm society, one that she argues can best be reached by an altruistic basis) by arguing that any alternative morality I offer would not be as good at generating THAT desired end.
What she seems immune to understanding is that it is her “end” (encompassed by the phrase, “altruistic morality” or “altruistic society”) that I am challenging. I am challenging that it is the purpose of morality to generate any sort of society at all. She apparently assumes that is the function of morality – to generate a
peaceful, co-operative, least-harm society.
She goes on:
AS IF morality is necessarily about self-interest or other_interest and how the two interests are best served (towards the end she has already assumed that morality is about).
I do not hold that morality is intrinsically about how we treat others, and I certainly do not hold that morality is about how to generate any society, let alone the specific kind of society Liz envisions. I hold that morality is, and can only be, about purpose.
What we ought do, in any non-moral sense, is governed not by how we should treat someone, or anything, but by the purpose we have in mind. How we ought treat clay, or wood, or stone, is not generated by the clay, but rather by the purpose I have in mind.
Morality is a description of oughts that serve a purpose, and this is where Liz’s vision fails to encompass anything outside of her programmed box; IF “how we treat others” is in service to the purpose of the kind of society desired, and IF how we treat others in service to that purpose is then moral by definition, then Altruism is not the only kind of morality there can be in building a society.
Morality is a system of oughts in service to a purpose. How we ought treat others is a result of the purpose. If human purpose is not absolute, then it, and thus how we ought treat others in service of purpose, changes – from group to group, society to society, “collective” to “collective”, which renders morality relative. One society’s self-evident moral good is another society’s self-evident evil.
In what Liz has described, altruism is a system of oughts in service to her particular purpose of creating a particular kind of social structure. So, let’s just assume altruism probably is the best system of oughts for generating the particular kind of society that Liz envisions.
So? Outside of that conceptual box, one can also have in mind different kinds of societies, where altruism would not be the best system of oughts to serve that purpose; in fact, one could have a society in mind where altruism would be counter-productive and even destructive to the desired social order. One can have in mind a purpose that has nothing to do with society-building at all.
In terms of society-building, altruism is only the “best” system of oughts for the end purpose of a particular kind of society; but that is where Liz repeatedly assumes her consequent in response to my challenges, and is apparently incapable of seeing outside of her conceptual box.
There have been, and are currently existing, many societies that are not based on altruism. There are other kinds ofsocial ends (purposes) that are not best served by altruistic behavior (oughts).
Liz wants to define “altruism” as morality, but unless she agrees that it is absolute, and holds the kind of society she wants to build as absolutely moral, then she has no principle by which to call any other proposed social end, or system of oughts in place to achieve that end, “wrong” or immoral. It’s relative. He said, she said; we say, they say. By the same principle of viewing the other society through the lens of your society’s perspective, they can judge her society wrong just as she can judge theirs wrong – it’s all relativistic finger-pointing.
In fact, by her principle that self-evident moral truths are only “objective” (collectively agreed), and that altruism-as-morality is only “objective” (collectively agreed-to definition), then any society with a different end purpose (say, slaves in service to a powerful elite based on raiding and pillaging outsiders) and different “oughts” (might makes right, fear-inducing behavior, elimination of the weak) is just as moral, and just as logically sound, as hers. Not in service to her purpose, but to theirs.
And so we get to “self-evident” moral truths; apparently, this only means to Liz that it is a collective agreement that it is true; it could be self-evidently true that torturing children for personal pleasure is a good thing, depending upon the “objective” (collectively agreed) view of any particular society.
Then by what principle does Liz’s society say that I’m wrong, when I act in a non-altruistic way, steal, prey on the weak and refuse to help anyone? All she has is “because we say so” (referring to her particular purpose and particular set of oughts), which is what I (and my band of merry ne’er-do-wells) have in response (because we say so, we have our own ends and our own system of oughts to achieve those ends), and the only way Liz can enforce her rules upon us is “because we have the power to do so”, which is might-makes-right.
As a moral relativist, she has no moral right to judge wrong and enforce against any different perspective because her relative, “collectively agreed” system can only extend to those within that have agreed to it. Since she has no moral right to judge my views (which are outside of her morally relative position), she has no moral right to enforce her rules on me should I break them.
Logically, if morality is relative, then the only way to judge the moral value of any behavior is to see if the action serves the purpose in the mind of the actor – not if it serves anyone else’s purpose, or even the collectively-agreed purpose of the society.
I think we all get that. What I don’t get is how you think it makes any sense. It is simply refuted by me, and apparently everyone else disagreeing in this thread and previous ones, by pointing out that your moral absolutes (whatever they may be; I don’t recall you ever explaining that bit) are an invention of your imagination. Many people get along fine and rationally by accepting (or campaigning to change) the rules for living that have developed organically over centuries. People make morals, like people make gods.
True, but as gods are the True God or are useless in the same way morals are absolute or are useless.
For morality to be useful, people just have to take it seriously. They do, even if they don’t believe it is objective or absolute.
Not being absolute is not the same as being useless.
We imprison and even execute people based on lack of “reasonable” doubt.
Nothing in this world is certain or absolute, yet we go about our business doing the best we can.
Really?
That is enforcement of the law. Nothing to do with morality.
Sure. Why not?
That’s why I presented the argument for what I said several times.
That would be a “refutation” of my argument had I claimed that such absolutes actually existed. I didn’t claim that, nor did I argue it. I assumed it for the sake of the logical exercise, just as I assumed they did not exist for the same reason in the case of relativistic morality.
You people really do not understand the nature of a hypothetical argument, do you?
As Lizzie said everybody acts “morally”. As there are differents ways to act and are all morally equivalent which morality you follow doesn`t matter.
So just list the absolute moral rules and quit playing games.
I´m not playing games.
Since there is absolutely no way to know what Objective Morality Central actually wants, what is the point of that utterance?
You make a subjective assessment of what objective morality cares about. Many people who claim objective morality continue to differ about that. So what’s the point?
You are howlingly mistaken if you think that ‘subjective morality’ means that there are as many moralities as there are people. Or that people ‘choose’ their morality the way you imagine they choose their preference in ice-cream. Because they don’t ‘choose’ that either. You can’t choose to like something that tastes like shit. You and WJM have a bizarre view of how ‘other people’ (assuming you agree they actually exist) operate.
So just list the absolute rules.
All ways of acting are not morally equivalent.
For two acts to be morally equivalent, they have to be equally moral or immoral. To determine that, you have to specify the moral system under which you are making the evaluation.
To show that all ways of acting are morally equivalent, you would have to show that they are equally moral under all systems of morality. That’s obviously false, and so is your assertion.
As for usefulness, you don’t think the idea that murder is immoral is useful, even for those who don’t believe it is absolute or objective? Would you prefer to live in a society where murder was perfectly acceptable?
And which morality we follow does matter, enormously. The belief that slavery is moral has huge consequences for a society, for example. Do you disagree?
Laws are pretty much consensus summations of morality. In some societies, laws were handed down by priests who claimed to have received them from god. But they were still made up by men.
And as such they have been fiddled with, interpreted and amended by men.
The reason you cannot have absolute or perfectly consistent morality is that morality is about consequences of behavior, and we cannot have perfect knowledge of consequences.
We have broad agreement that covers trivial cases of murder and theft, but we have little argument about simple cases.
So the hypothetical argument is that if objective morality exists, a rationally coherent morality ensues, but doesn’t (ensue) if it doesn’t (exist)? Not if you can’t even tell the two types of morality apart.
In a world where objective morality did not exist (just step through this hypothetical argument with me. You can do that, can’t you?), believing that it did would be believing in a state-of-affairs that was not actual simply because you find the actual state of affairs ‘irrational’, ‘incoherent’ or whatever. To save rationality, you must believe in a thing that does not exist. Of course, your conclusion is “therefore that thing must exist”, but you lost me (and most of the rest) at the “irrational” part. There is nothing obviously irrational about believing that the fundamentals of shared morality are a combination of genetic and learned behaviours. If individuals did ‘choose their own morality’ there is nothing in that state to indicate that the choice was based on an objective or a subjective position re: its origin. Neither has the upper hand on rationality. But anyway people don’t ‘choose’ in that free way you think they do. Their genes and their culture get in the way.
Well Lizzie choosed a morality of “be altruistic , no harm”, muslim bombers choosed other and me another one.
You know that coprophagia exists?
One thign is morally, other is legally. Where you have a law, moral is useless.
Try a little thought experiment. Suppose everyone in the world received the same telepathic communication from morality central at the same time: thou shalt not murder.
Would the effect be? Would everyone agree on the definition of murder in all times and all places and all circumstances?
Would it help if everyone were supplied with Google Glasses at birth that signaled red or green for our each and every action or intention?
What useful or practical effect does this discussion have? Where is it going, or where could it lead?
My absolute rules are bounded to religion.
I suspect he does, but he’s not asserting that people don’t eat shit. He’s not even asserting that nobody likes the taste of shit.
He’s asserting that you can’t choose to like the taste of shit.
You know that coprophagia exists?
Do people choose to like it? Or do they do it despite the revulsion it causes? Similarly, people may mutilate babies despite the revulsion that causes. So bloody what? “Gotcha” exceptions do not a coherent argument make. If the baby-mutilator/shit-eater happens to believe in objective morality (which they misinterpret, or interpret correctly but choose to go against), where does that get us? To which real-world moral situation would sticking ‘objective’ in front of it make one iota of difference?
I think we get that. But that alone is meaningless.
Yes, still you have all that issues of interpretation, but at least murder will be morally wrong for eveybody everywhere. We are going to have an objective rule to follow. But moral never is about a rule like that, it needs a goal for the ought to.
For you that are atheists of course, not for me.
After 20 centuries of Christianity Lizzie believes that she derived logically the commandment “be altruistic, no harm”. Did answer your question that?