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.
Beg many questions lately? Disregarding the question of why I should accept this maxim as a basis for my moral system, who determines what is in the “best interests” of others? “Best interests” according to what standard and evaluated by what criteria, and why should I subscribe to it?
Under Darwinism, a completely vacuous statement that means nothing more than “I do think that deeds I agree with last longer than ones I disagree with …”
davehooke,
I’m referring to “Darwinism” in the colloquial, philosophical sense, not in the scientific-theory-of-evolution” sense.
William,
Could you work through the “Trolley Problem” and tell me what your “objective morality” instructs you is the right thing to do?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
If others who also claim to have access to, as you do, this “objective morality” disagree on the correct way to proceed would that give you any cause for concern?
There are several variants on that page, I’m sure we can find others also. As it seems to me that we can scientifically test this “objective morality” and further find out exactly what answers it gives in specific situations, thereby possibly creating the foundation for the one true path.
So, what do you say? There are plenty more tests out there of course. We’ll need many to really understand what answers this “object morality” provides in all aspects of life.
I’d like to know on what grounds William asserts the objectivity of his particular morality.
I’m not at all sure that there is any such thing as an objective morality.
William J. Murray,
No-one here is a Social Darwinist. Almost no-one at all is a Social Darwinist now. Social Darwinism is a bizarre attempt to use a scientific description as a prescription.
So why are you referring to a “philosophical” sense of Darwinism?
As far as I can tell, it’s ambiguous. There is no clear moral choice, especially since in a real life situation, contrary to the wording of your hypothetical, there’s no way to clearly predict what the outcome of action or inaction will be.
One thing to try and keep in mind is that the main argument I present is not for any particular version of “what is objective morality”, but rather about the logical ramifications of (1) the assumption that morality refers to a subjective commodity versus (2) the assumption that morality refers to an objective commodity.
If we posit that an objective morality exists, it is still subjectively interpreted. There is a difference between subjective interpretations of a subjective commodity, and subjective interpretations of an objectively existent commodity. On the one hand, people can make interpretive mistakes about an objectively existent phenomena; however, however one can hardly argue that “lemon pie tastes good” is a “mistake” or “incorrect”. You cannot “correct” a subjective preference. All you can do is, perhaps, change it.
If you and I disagree about what the fastest production car is, it is an objective commodity that gives us a means by which to decide which of us is correct. If you and I disagree about what the best looking car is (subjective commodity), there is simply no means by which to come to a rational agreement.
Only subjective moral statements concern me, because there is simply no way to meaningfully evaluate them.
I have no problem answering any question honestly.
I didn’t say anything about social darwinism. I use the term “Darwinist” as shorthand for “atheistic materialism”, which includes the view that “life” and all it entails is the product of mechanistic & chance interactions of matter and nothing else.
Shalom from up thread:
Worth noting that Shalom is spot on.
William J. Murray,
And if we posit that there is no such thing as an objective morality?
William,
For now I will have to take your answer to that as you would do nothing, and therefore take that also as your objective morality’s answer for that situation. Five die.
You would do nothing, not knowing if action would result in the desired outcome or inaction not result in it.
Yet it seems to me there is never a way to “clearly predict” what the outcome of action or inaction will be, in either a hypothetical or real life situation. So you have to act, one way or the other, regardless.
Can you think of and give an example of a situation that would fit your criteria of a clear moral choice plus a choice of outcomes that clearly result from those choices (or perhaps we can reword the existing trolly example to make it explicit that in “trollyverse” actions *must* lead to certain outcomes) that you can use an as example of how your interpretation of objective morality can help us understand that objective morality and how it differs from pretender morality or indeed no morality at all?
I don’t “assert” any particular objective morality. What I assert is that without the premise of an objective basis for morality, morality rationally reduces to nothing more than “because I say so”, which validates any act as equally moral, rendering morality as a concept meaningless. You might as well just say ” because I say so” and have done with it.
These are rational arguments based upon the two premises.
I believe God exists, and I believe there is an objective morality. I believe that the “rules” of the objective morality can be determined by (1) locating self-evident moral truths, such as “it is always wrong to torture infants for personal pleasure, and then (2) discerning from those self-evident truths fundamental moral principles (it is wrong to cause harm to others for personal gratification), (3) to general statements of morality (in most cases, it is wrong to knowingly cause harm to others), and then on to conditional discernments of moral obligations in particular instances.
I hold that IF there is an objective morality, it must exist as mental architecture (like gravity as part of physical world architecture), and it must be an innate quality of God – not something god “invents” or “decides”. IOW, God cannot choose what is good or bad; god **is** what is good. If god could arbitrarily change what is good, it would render “good” as arbitrary as if humans decided what was good and bad based on their own whims and desire.
Employing deceptive rhetoric terms for emotional contrivance would be “evil” in most people’s books, if it caused harm for personal gain. There is nothing in “Darwinism” (or “materialism” or “atheism”) that says “right” means “I can do whatever I can and want”. You just Made That Up.
Cool. Hofstadter might agree with you, at least if we extend the concept into the non-human domain.
You don’t have to. Firstly, I’m proposing it as a definition for the purposes of this discussion, that we can if necessary, argue about. Secondly, I suggest that it is the way the word is almost universally used, in the context of morality, across geographical, religious, and historical boundaries. Societies have disagreed enormously about what I am terming “ethics”, and on who counts as “others” but I am suggesting that the very fact that the word “ought” or its non-English equivalents are universal, and that that morality is characterised by the distinction between between what we want and what we ought, indicates that it is a universal. If you really want to argue that “morality” could just as easily mean “doing what I want” I think you are simply redefining black as white. The word is simply not used that way.
OK, let me try to be clearer. I am saying, firstly, that for the women and children being blown up, being blown up constitutes harm to them. I don’t think there is likely to be any disagreement about that. I am secondly saying that some people may, while agreeing that blowing up women and children causes them harm, it is a lesser harm, in total, than not defeating Regime X, which is trying to blow up even more women and children, and so is the ethical duty imposed on us by morality. Others, on the other hand, may also agree that blowing up women and children causes them harm, but it is a lesser harm, in total, than letting infidel Americans corrupt the world with Coca Cola and promiscuity. I would say that both blower-uppers are behaving morally, but the ethics of the second are less well based in good evidence than the first. And I’d look seriously askance at both.
Exactly. That is what I’m saying – we can agree that such people are not behaving morally, by the normal use of the word. They may be behaving harmlessly (and thus not immorally, either), but a moral act is one, I’d say, that is undertaken for altruistic reasons, and an immoral act one that is taken for deliberately selfish reasons. Both can bring about harm; the latter can even, fortuitously, bring about good.
It’s neither a straw man nor a diversion. If there is such a thing as moral behaviour, there is such a thing as immoral behaviour, and I’d say that it is reasonable English usage to say that someone who has done harm by behaving immorally (i.e. acting knowing that their gain is someone else’s loss) is guilty of causing harm. Whereas someone who has done harm by either trying to do good (which happens) or by accident, is not guilty. But harm is done, either way, and harm is not a good thing, though it may be morally neutral.
Obviously not. Volcanoes are not morally responsible for their actions, as no means of foreseeing the consequences of their actions, and weighing up the harm to others against benefit to themselves.
Of course it does. You don’t consider that “under Darwinism”, people are unable to think, surely? Are you suggesting that the notion that thought is the result of “interactions of matter” renders thought non-existent? As for “happenstance” – I’m not even sure what that word is supposed to mean. Or are suggesting (yes, you probably are) that there can be no true moral responsibility if we are “just” molecules? Assuming the latter, and granting, for the sake of argument, that it is true (though I disagree, more on that in another thread, perhaps), then even that would not lead to the conclusion that morality can be anything you want it to be, or that ethical decisions needn’t take evidence into account. Indeed, if a deterministic mechanistic account of behaviour is correct, we are obliged to behave altruistically, and to punish those who do not, because that’s the way we are “wired”. We don’t have the “freedom” to do otherwise, unless we are unlucky enough to be “wired” differently.
Indeed, that’s a view I used to hold – that under “materialism” there was no moral responsibility, just animal behaviour that more or less conforms to something we call moral precepts – it’s why I was a theist. I now think that view is based on a misunderstanding about what decision-making means. But I guess I still respect the view 🙂
And we use the word “ocean wave” as if they are something other than happenstance interactions of molecules – not because it is “stealing” any concept at all, but because waves can only be understood as systems, not as “happenstance interactions”. Same with the word “I”, and “you”, and, for that matter “morality” and “decision-making”. Just because something is a system of parts does not mean it is no more than its parts, nor that, if you were to subtract the parts, there’d be something left over. Systems are perfectly real, and have properties not possessed by their parts. In fact all “parts” are sub-systems, until get down to baryons, I guess. Certainly molecules cannot think, any more than they can wave. That doesn’t mean that thought and waves do not exist.
No.
What are the “causal entities” when a chemistry teacher drops a piece of sodium in a flask of water, and a flame appears:
The chemistry teacher
The sodium atoms
The water molecules
The hydrogen gas
The energy of the hydrogen electrons
The quantum state of the hydrogen electrons.
The class of kids.
I suggest there is correct answer at all, certainly not the most reductionist one. There are proximal and distal causes, and their are causal descriptions at many levels, including the level of the teacher, and the teacher’s decision to go for sodium today, rather than potassium, because she’s run out of matches, and potassium sometimes doesn’t ignite, and in any case, usually the kids get more excited when the thing bursts spontaneously into flames, and she wants to evoke a passion for science in these kids. And of those descriptive levels, the ones that treat the teacher as a prescriptive entity, a moral decision maker, are no less valid than any other – it’s what she is.
It’s a perfectly sensible concept. We parse the world into things with properties – why should those things-with-properties not include intentional agents? It’s not as though “intentional agent” isn’t a highly useful and predictive description of the thing we call a person. Or even a cat.
Well no. And you keep using that word “happenstance”. I think you should think more deeply about what you mean by it 😉
OMagain,
The first thing you need to understand is that I’m not claiming to know any list of what is moral and what is not in any particular situation; I’m claiming that the concept of morality is incoherent and useless without assuming an objective basis.
There are some things I accept as self-evident moral truths. I rationally discern what moral principles I can from them, and reason out (as best I can) what I ought do in various circumstances. I don’t really worry about situations I find ambiguous or difficult to discern. I’ve made many moral mistakes in my life and I’m sure I’ll make more. Just because something objectively exists doesn’t mean it is easy to figure out every aspect of it.
There’s a gap between “if there is an objective morality, it must exist as mental architecture (like gravity as part of physical world architecture)” and “it must be an innate quality of God”. To see this, notice that one could hold that gravitational attraction is an essential and intrinsic feature of the physical world without holding that only God could have caused the physical universe to have that feature. Likewise, one could hold that morality is an essential and intrinsic feature of human social psychology (perhaps also of the psychology of some non-human, intelligent social animals) but still hold that we don’t need to posit God as the cause of that psychology.
Now, no doubt that if one believes that God is the cause of objective morality, and one believes in God, then one is committed to affirming objective morality — all well and good! But that’s not the same as claiming that one can affirm objective morality only if God exists, one believes in God, and God is the cause of morality. It seems to me, on the contrary, that a rational commitment to objective morality has nothing at all to do with one’s account of the origins of objective morality. (Am I entitled to affirm that there are tea-cups if and only if I can provide an account of how tea-cups are made?)
Needless to say, I think that Kant provided the right account of the content of objective morality, and that naturalism provides the right account of how objective morality came into existence — hence my nom de plume.
William J. Murray,
Interesting, and completely useless, conflation of terms.
So the view that life is not of supernatural origin is nihilistic, is it? What if it turns out that no god created life? Are we then obliged to be nihilists? What if we don’t want to be?
We don’t need to “posit” that – we can see that there is. Is my point.
Altruism, whether negative (“do no harm”) or positive (“treat others as you would be treated”) is almost universally – i.e. objectively – regarded as the domain of morality. If it ain’t altruism, it ain’t morality.
However misguided and ill-founded that altruism may sometimes be, and however, narrowly the boundaries around “others” are drawn.
Yes, I know, and it’s very annoying. However, mostly we know what you mean.
Yes, that’s probably true. But altruism seems pretty objective to me. And, far from being “borrowed” is, I suggest, the inspiration for the concept of a benevolent deity rather than the other way round.
Quite. But no need to invoke theism as the origin – being a social species seems good enough.
No, indeed. Knowing that it is right to do the best you can to not harm/try to help others doesn’t infallibly lead to the action that will best achieve your aim. But we can all agree, atheist and non-atheist, that it is right to do your best not to harm and try to help others.
The idea that being an “atheist materialist” prevents you from seeing this, is a non sequitur, in my view. Even if you think we think the principle of trying to do your best not to harm, and to help where possible, is simply “wired in” into us by our evolution as a social species.
Although, as it happens, I don’t think that.
Well I do not see it. First if it is almost universal there is some people that do not think that your moral rule is “objective”. Wich is the percentage of agreement make something objective? Second: If the rule can be applied misguided, ill-founded or the boundaries around others are not clear then again is a rule subject of interpretation not objective.
Objective or subjective I think is a bad word for moral rules, I think is better to talk about relative or absolute.
Agreed.
Why? Even if God exists, why should God necessarily share this human mental architecture?
Good question. But I didn’t actually say there was an objective “moral rule”. I said that, I think universally, the domain of morality is considered to be the domain of human behaviour that considers what we “ought” as opposed to what we “want” (though mercifully they sometimes coincide).
Can you give an example of a society in which “morality” was considered something other than this?
Well, as I said, I think ethical decisions are often difficult, as William agrees – too often we have to weigh up which of two harmful actions is the least harmful. and there will be widespread disagreement over this.
But theism doesn’t solve the problem, nor does atheism create one. It’s just there.
No, that is the definition of morality, but the moral problem is how we know what we ought to do. And just a side question How darwinism explain the appearance of morality?
Yes, agree. So the man made moral rules are relatives to what each man think is “better”. Do you agree.
I hardly “made up” the “might makes right” conclusion drawn from Darwinism, materialism, and atheism.
You’ve provided me no compelling reason to even consider that definition, much less argue about it.
Well, I guess if we agreed that “causing the least harm” was a moral standard, we could get to sorting out evidence that supports ethical interpretations of that standard … but, unfortunately, I have no reason to adopt “causing the least harm” or “preventing the greater harm” as my moral standard in the first place – under Darwinism.
No, it renders thought irrelevant as a necessary, causative consideration in regards to the act. Interacting molecules can generate action with or without the associative thoughts or sensations of intention.
For a theist. For a darwinist, it’s a lie. Unless a “person” has the capacity to somehow overrule what happenstance interactions of molecules result in, holding a “person” responsible for an event the molecular interactions precede is no different than holding a volcano responsible for choosing to erupt. Those concepts you’re employing – intention, choosing, choice, deliberate, thought, I, we, etc. – are misrepresentations when employed under Darwinism. There is no “I” that can choose to do something other than what happenstance molecular interactions commit my body and brain to, because “I” **am** those happenstance molecular interactions. Nothing more.
Because you label a set of happenstance molecular interactions with the word “thought” or “I” or “deliberate” doesn’t change the nature of what is going on (under Darwinism) – happenstance molecular interactions. Physics. Chance & necessity. The same thing that is causing the volcano. I can label the rock with the term “I”, and the pressure with the term “thought”, and the magma with the term “choice”, but those labels do not change the nature of what is actually occurring – happenstance molecular interactions (chance and necessity, physics, chemistry, etc.)
Darwinists are either lying or stealing concepts when they use any of those terms as if they mean anything other than “happenstance molecular interactions”. We do not hold water “responsible” for a flooding when it does whatever happenstance molecular interactions causes it to do. We don’t hold meteors personally responsible. Nor avalanches. But you seem to think that if we just label some part of those happenstance molecular interactions with words like “I” and “choice” and “thought”, then we have rationally sound grounds to hold those happenstance molecular interactions personally and morally responsible for effects they happen to cause.
Well, can solve part of the problem. If there is a God, who is by definition The Good, and this God gives to you the moral rule. That is a moral rule compelling for every body every time. Still we have the problem of the interpretation of the rule as each message also from God need interpretation.
Which is why it is necessary to hold that (1) some moral truths are self evident, and (2) reason is a valid means by which to examine moral questions. Without self-evident moral truths, we have no way to begin, and without a presumably valid means of discernment, we have no way to proceed.
Can you make an example of self-evident moral truths?
In other words, please have a sense of humor, folks. This is meant as satire.
It’s wrong to torture children for personal pleasure.
Well, whatever you call universal mind where objective morality exists as part of the fundamental architecture that all individual minds share.
God works for me. If FSM works for you, knock yourself out.
I didn’t say anything about “supernatural origin”.
If there is no god, then I guess you are obliged to believe whatever your particular arrangements of happenstance interacting molecules determines. Take the issue of what you “want” up with physics.
Elizabeth is the queen of convenient definitions. Yes, let’s just DEFINE morality and altruism to mean “lemon pie tastes good” ! That will provide a sound basis for a rational morality based on the “lemon pie tastes good” principle.
Except … once again .. I have absolutely no compelling reason to consider, much less accept, your definition.
What moral rule does God give you, Blas?
If that is self-evident (and I agree it is, and an example the general moral principle that harming others for personal benefit is immoral), then where does God come in?
Calling yourself an atheist materialist is not the same as living in an atheistic materialist reality. Under moral theism, people that call themselves atheists and materialists have the same access to ABSOLUTE (because you and I are not using “objective” the same way) morality, whether or not they accept or deny that which they are accessing.
Atheists and materialists can be just as moral as anyone else. I’m not making a case otherwise. The case I’m making is that their worldview renders their morality incoherent, self-contradicting and useless – if their worldview was **actually** true.
Atheists and materialist profit, in debates, from this very fact: lots of people hold the intellectual position of being an atheist and/or a materialist – a Darwinist – but do not live and act as if that worldview was true. In fact, it’s impossible to live life as if Darwinism is actually true. Indeed, the “consensus morality” Elizabeth serves up as an “objective” standard (as if consensus = objective) upon which to fashion agreement is almost wholly a lie – a set of concepts stolen from a deeply, broadly theistic world history, a history that surely fashioned our western cultural views.
Is it not self-evidently wrong to toss newborn infants off a cliff, no matter that they were varied slightly from an idealized physical norm? And yet, we had a culture that did just that very thing. Is slavery not self-evidently wrong? And yet, again, no location in the world is exempt from a history that includes slavery as acceptable.
Essentially, when Liz says “objective”, she is referring to a cultural consensus. A culture where 90% of the people agree that lemon pie tastes good doesn’t change the subjective (read: relative) nature of the principle “lemon pie tastes good”.
She wants to establish an “agreement” that the basis of “good” is “do no harm”, as if such an agreement magically turns “do no harm” into an objective commodity, as if our agreement that “lemon pie tastes good” somehow renders the “good tasting” aspect of lemon pie “objective”. I suppose then that anyone who said lemon pie tasted awful would be classifed by Elizabeth as deluded. Not because they were actually deludedf, but because we conveniently define everyone who dislikes lemon pie as deluded.
Unless morality is like gravity – it applies whether you think it does or not; whether you believe in it or not, is relentlessly the same regardless of the labels one applies to it or the interpretations offered; and has inescapable consequences for certain behavior (as there are gravity consequences to physical action), then it’s not worth debating. Even if 99% of the world defines morality as “do no harm”, so what? Who cares? I can harm all the people I want and get away with it and prosper.
Why should I give a damn about morality in the first place, regardless of how you want to define it, and regardless of what you mean by objective and subjective? Why shouldn’t I just do whatever I want and whatever I can in my own self-interest?
Under Darwnism, there is no answer. Under Darwinism, morality is social & mental puffery. Nothing more.
Why should I try to be moral in the first place? Why should I give any thought to it whatsoever?
Well, I don’t know anyone who concludes that from any of those things. It doesn’t follow from Darwinism, materialism or atheism. Although conceivably it follows from Abrahamic theism, whereby the most All – mighty (why do you think God is called that?) defines what is right, regardless of what we mere creatures might think. So if you didn’t make it up, someone did, and it wasn’t any Darwinist, materialist or atheist that I know of. How would that conclusion even work?
That’s odd. It seems rather close to the one you offered as “self-evident” – causing harm for personal benefit.
What else would you adopt, that could, conceivably, be called “morality”? (apart from more positive versions such as helping others). Why should it not be as self-evident to “Darwinists” as it is to you that morality is about doing what we ought when it conflicts with what we want? In other words, to consider others when we seek to benefit ourselves?
I’d like to see the evidential basis for this assertion. What evidence do you have that thought can occur without the concomitant “interacting molecules” or, more importantly, that those “interacting molecules” could occur without the concomitant thought?
They are no more “misrepresentations when employed under Darwinism” than when employed under anything else. People – by which I mean biological organisms of the species we call “human” – are capable, as volcanos are not, of predicting the likely consequences of their actions, both to themselves and to others, and of making an informed choice of action. Nothing in “Darwinism” makes this not true. And the reason is perfectly clear – we have brains and limbs and sensory organs. My field of study is actually decision-making. I wouldn’t bother if I was a vulcanologist. Fortunately, I am a neuroscientist.
Can you define “happenstance”? It’s really confusing. The “molecular interactions” that occur in our bodies and brains are not “happenstance” in any sense that means anything to me. They are extremely finely tuned, and allow us to make predictions about the consequences of our as-yet-unexecuted actions that we can, and, do, feed back into the decision-making processes before deciding to act – actions that most often involve finding out yet more information that can inform further actions. The entire system we refer to as a volitional agent, or, when it’s the volitional agent doing the referring, “I”, or “me”, and when it’s the one in front of us “you”, or “William” and when it’s volitional agents elsewhere, “they, he, or she”. They are perfectly real. Do you think that “under Darwinism” it is wrong to call a fish a fish? That we should call it a collection of happenstance molecular interactions? I call you, William, a volitional agent because that’s a pretty good description of what you are, although I could also add lots of other properties that would characterise you further, including your ideas, beliefs, likes, dislikes, cognitive biases, whatever. All that is just hunky dory whether “under Darwinism” or under water.
Of course the “Nature of what is going on” is different in a volcano than in a human being. For a start, volcanos don’t name anything, let alone themselves. and if you called a volcano “I”, you’d have some very weird issues. It would be weird enough if you called me “I”. I assume that normally the only entity you call “I” is yourself. Same here. When I speak, the referent for “I” is this human organism, sitting here typing, not the one somewhere over the Atlantic, typing at me. We might both be made of “molecular interactions” as is the volcano, but totally different systems. Ours are decision-making systems, and forward-modelling systems, and parsing-reality-into-objects systems, and positing-causal-hypothesis-systems, and an – imaging-what-it-is-like-to-be-another-person systms, and avolcano is not.
Ergo, you and I have moral responsibility, and a volcano does not, because you and I can make moral decisions (decide to do what we ought, not what we want) and a volcano can not.
For goodness’ sake, define “happenstance”. And what you say is absurd. Of course you can’t make an entity morally responsible by labelling it morally responsible. We determine that an entity is morally responsible by evaluating its capacity to make informed ethical decisions. People can. Avalanches can’t.
Why should a Darwinist find this any harder to understand than you do? And in what possible sense is the idea “stolen”?
Lizzie,
What moral rule does God give you, Blas?
Does it matter?
And people that rape and kill people do not see that it is self evident wrong?
Civilization that killing kids were not punished didn´t saw that is self evident?
As this pargraph can be understood as the relativity of moral rules I´ll take it as a yes to my question.
Now I would like to know if you like to answer if you think that you are free to choose your moral rule. You choosed to think that doing altruistic acts with no harm or you are determined to think in that way?
Some eeople during his life change his moral rule, others stick to one they learned/choosed for their entire life. That is free or is determined by our genes and our enviroment?
Well, note my distinction between morality and ethics – I think that morality a pretty universally agreed domain of human decision making – the conflict between what we want to do and what we ought to do, in other words the conflict between what will benefit ourselves, and what may harm, or benefit, others, and that immoral behaviour is behavior that causes harm to others for personal benefit. But I do think that ethical dilemmas are situational.
Depends what you mean by “free”. Given that morality, in my view, is pretty universally defined as the rule that we should not harm others for our own benefit, that puts pretty firm constraints on what is ethical in any given dilemma; other constraints are imposed by the information we have. But I think we are “free” in the sense that it is our moral duty to come to ethical decisions based on the best information we have, which will involve, sometimes, weighing up quite complex and sometimes heart-breaking rival claims – triage, for instance.
Sorry, I’m not understanding your question – could you rephrase?
I think most people think they should, in principle, not be selfish, although perhaps some people never learn that. That may in some cases because of genetic or environmental factors, and their interaction. Some people learn it but ignore it. Part of normal child development is learning to take turns, to give other people pleasure, to avoid hurting people. I would call that “free” in the sense that we have options. I don’t think we are “free” in the sense of “could do anything”. I think when we talk about “free choice” it’s more coherent to think in terms the ability to make an informed choice, and to seek further information if necessary, than in terms of “you can do anything you like”. That’s why I tend to talk in terms of moral responsibility and the capacity to make informed choices that consider other people, than “freedom”. Ethical considerations impose restraints, rather than granting freedom!
It logically and necessarily follows from all three. Since there is no absolute basis for morality and no means by which to discern and override – might – at least in the form of brute physics – decides what is right.
The difference is that under theism, I have a compelling reason to consider morality in the first place, and a compelling reason to figure out what is moral and behave accordingly. Darwinism offers me no such compelling reason.
Any maxim or principle I wish, seeing as under Darwinism I get to conveniently define any term or concept that I wish (or that physics compels). If I wish to define morality as “doing whatever I wish for my own benefit”, then that is what morality is.
Except that under darwinism I am under no moral obligation. Obligation to what, and to whom, and with what consequences? Under Darwinism, I have no moral obligations whatsoever; I only have definitions I can choose to follow or not with no necessary consequences.
Word games.
You’re stealing concepts again. Under Darwinism, the terms “people” and “beliefs” and “thoughts” and “decisions” cannot confer upon the happenstance interactions of molecules prescriptive causal freedom and authority. Under Darwinism, “people” are just things like anything else in the universe being coerced into manifestations, arrangements and activities by physics.
Many things are easy to understand, like “it’s always wrong, in any context, to torture children for your own pleasure”.
What is more difficult is figuring out if your worldview has the basis to support and justify such a claim in a coherent way. Even if Darwinists agree to the claim, Darwinism cannot rationally support or justify it.
Knowing that something is wrong doesn’t prevent people from doing wrong things.
I don’t see an answer to my very basic question:
Under Darwinism, why should I care about morality at all?
WJM,
1. There is no absolute basis for morality if there is no god
2. There is no means to discern morality if there is no god
3. Physics determines morality if there is no god
2 is pure assertion.
3 doesn’t follow from 1 or 2.
Interesting that you are a hardcore reductionist, William. Many atheists are not.
Using the term atheism as equivalent to darwinism demonstrates your Protestant-based prejudice (that’s not a conclusion the Catholic church sanctions).
The difference is that under theism, I have a compelling reason to consider morality in the first place, and a compelling reason to figure out what is moral and behave accordingly. Darwinism offers me no such compelling reason.
And as it has been said many, many times, theism offers no compelling reason to challenge ones own the religious beliefs (and hence discern “true” or “universal” morality from religion-specific morality), but basic human curiosity does, and that’s something both theists and atheists share.
I agree that #2 is pure assertion in terms of what has been covered so far, but I do have reasons and justification for the statement.
I didn’t make the claim in #3. The claim I made is that physics determines morality if atheistic materialism (aka darwinism) is true.
Even if one insists on using “Darwinism” to mean “reductive materialism” — a usage that’s pretty unique to creationists and intelligent design advocates — I don’t see why one’s acceptance of any metaphysical doctrine would affect what one cares about.
We begin philosophizing from where we are, from the world as we experience it, and look to metaphysics for describing and explaining the basic structure of reality. (Though the rise of modern science has, in my view, altered, rather than displaced, the task of metaphysics.) So in our metaphysics we seek to explain, among other things, what it is that we care about, and how it came to be that we care about those things.
Now, if (a) we already believed that morality is only worth caring about if it is anchored in a transcendent reality, and (b) we came to believe that there is no transcendent reality to play that anchoring role, then (c) we would then come to believe that morality is not worth caring about. But (c) only follows from (b) if (a) is held firmly in place.
Put another way, nihilism follows from materialism only if one retains a Platonic or theistic conception of what values are. But nihilism does not follow from materialism if one revises one’s conception of what values are. Then the question is, how are we to do so?
As I’ve indicated elsewhere (many times), I’m completely sympathetic to the view that materialism, especially in the really strong, Epicurean version, cannot accommodate any conception of values. So that’s a strike against Epicurean-style materialism. But it is not a strike against more liberal versions of naturalism, and it is certainly not a strike against Darwinism qua empirically-grounded scientific theory.
Sure it does. Since whether or not one is behaving morally has necessary consequences under theism (well,most forms of theism), one is compelled to ensure that what they believe and do is actually moral. In fact, under most forms of theism, whether or not one is being moral is the most important consideration by which to guide their behavior. It is of extreme importance. There is little that is “more compelling” to a search for something than inescapable consequences for failure to properly understand/find what you are search for.
Basic curiosity might provide an interest in a subject, but not a compelling reason to consider or pursue it. Under Darwinism, if you are operating under a “false” morality, so what? What difference does it make?