Please help me understand non-religious metaethics.
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Author Topic: Please help me understand non-religious metaethics.  (Read 2292 times)
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Nathan
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« on: December 16, 2014, 04:06:36 PM »

For reference, what confuses me about secular ethics is the metaethics, not the normative ethics. I'm...actually not particularly thrilled with some of the implications of the divine command and ideal observer theories (I'm not sure which between these two I personally subscribe to), but I'm kind of at a loss as to how other metaethical systems (other than pure moral relativism or emotivism or things like that, with which I'm extremely uncomfortable on pretty much every level) don't just end up resolving into infinite recursions of self-reference. I guess the secular metaethic that makes the most sense to me with my current understanding is G.E. Moore's, in which (if I understand it more or less correctly) 'good' is axiomatic and irreducible in itself.
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afleitch
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« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2014, 05:08:22 PM »

I would tend to agree that ‘good’ is irreducible. I have to preface that with my own position that meta-physical or meta-ethical concepts are grounded in the physical. While they do not as themselves have any objective reality the minds that construct them do. Every argument, every construct and is a some subset of physical information, deduced from a physical experience that is then invested with meaning by a conscious mind which is itself an active physical process. That allows me, I think to rightfully defer the base nuances of human behaviour to the biological sciences. If I wish to pick up a concept and play with it, it cannot escape that inheritance. And when I play with the concept of 'good' it does not trouble me that this is the case

When we look outside of ourselves, we infer intelligence because we are intelligent and we infer goodness because we are good. And because of that, we assume that there must be an arbiter of what is good outside of ourselves. What is ‘good’ can only be experienced and determined by the person who is living it who may then impart how he internalizes ‘good’ to other people.

It is not possible for ‘goodness’ to exist outside of human reference because our determination of good is entirely self-evident. We are the only ‘self’ who contemplates what is good. Until we can communicate with another ‘self’ who has to also experience ‘good’ that is measurable against our own, then we can come to no other conclusion. But as another ‘self’ will never be human, then it can never be measurable.

We can infer that different standards of what appears to be beneficial differ species to species. We cannot take a moral position that the spider that eats it’s mate to assist in propagating the species, by doing something that we would find abhorrent, is doing anything other than what is beneficial for them. We cannot argue it as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We can make no moral statement on that matter because it’s ‘benefit’ does not concern us. It exists outside our ability to experience it. We find it difficult as a species to separate what is beneficial from what is good because the two are not always mutual.

Any model that relies on a ‘creator’ or an external ‘self’ that possesses different abilities from our own has the same relationship as we do, to the spider. It cannot argue that what we do is measurable against it’s own standard. It's an absurdity.
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bedstuy
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« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2014, 05:54:11 PM »

For one thing, the existence of God is irrelevant to ethics.  If doesn't do anything to establish conceptions of the "good" and God doesn't seem to have a benefit in terms of ethical behavior.  There's no evidence that any supposed Gods have established ethical principles or even that being a creator of the universe entitles you to make up ethical principles.  What if a God is evil?  Surely, ethics can't come from an evil God, right?  So, I don't get that. 

And, I don't really get how "meta-Ethics" are really all that problematic.  By that I mean, there's no actual debate on these issues outside the ivory tower.  It's essentially semantics because these issues never crop up in an actual discussion of an ethical problem.  It's only raised by religious people who claim for some strange reason, "without God, there's no morality."

The basic underpinning of ethics is our collective human experience.  People have a collective memory and collective sense of what is beneficial and detrimental based on experience and knowledge of the world.  And, after all, if you're defining an idea, you're always vulnerable to a infinite loop of these definitional questions.  It's not like you could capture "goodness" or "truth" and put it in a mason jar.
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afleitch
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« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2014, 06:20:44 PM »

For one thing, the existence of God is irrelevant to ethics.  If doesn't do anything to establish conceptions of the "good" and God doesn't seem to have a benefit in terms of ethical behavior.  There's no evidence that any supposed Gods have established ethical principles or even that being a creator of the universe entitles you to make up ethical principles.  What if a God is evil?  Surely, ethics can't come from an evil God, right?  So, I don't get that. 

I agree that a god is irrelevant to ethics. Certainly within the Christian context, god within the Bible clearly behaves in manners which are almost, but not quite, universally indefensible either from a detached human-self perspective, or even from the perspective of his own laws. Curiously, strands of Christian theology that often take issue with self-reference or moral relativism within secular ethics, either doesn't mind or tacitly requires both self-reference or moral relativism to apply to god. Otherwise acts of genocide in the Old Testament for example, would remain unjustified. 'It's okay if god does it because he's god' is moral relativism in it's purest sense because not only are actions that one considers 'bad' justified because of who perpetrates them but there is no room, as there is for us humans, for ethical principles to change through collective experience.
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Nathan
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« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2014, 07:23:27 PM »
« Edited: December 16, 2014, 07:40:17 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

Most of this makes sense so far, especially afleitch's first post, although I'm not sure I can really tell whether he's positing ethical naturalism or ethical non-naturalism, since he expresses approbation for the idea that 'good' is irreducible but then describes it as a function of what seems to me an awful lot like dependent arising out of human subjectivity. (If he's willing to ascribe that term to what he's discussing, I actually immediately understand it a lot better, because that's a concept with which I'm in other contexts already familiar from studying Buddhism, and envisioning how one would apply it to ethical propositions isn't really that big of a cognitive leap for me.)

However there are a couple of aspects of what bedstuy's saying to which I'd like to take exception.

For one thing, the existence of God is irrelevant to ethics.  If doesn't do anything to establish conceptions of the "good" and God doesn't seem to have a benefit in terms of ethical behavior.  There's no evidence that any supposed Gods have established ethical principles or even that being a creator of the universe entitles you to make up ethical principles.  What if a God is evil?  Surely, ethics can't come from an evil God, right?  So, I don't get that. 

By what sort of robust definition could a creator deity even be evil? If there was something that independently of that deity set any kind of objective moral norms, the deity wouldn't be capital-G 'God' as that term is conventionally philosophically defined because it wouldn't be omnipotent. There would be something identifiably existing outside its demesne, something that it likely wouldn't have created (I guess it's conceivably possible that a deity could establish moral norms according to which its own actions would be wicked, and that would indeed raise the question of why exactly the pronouncements such an apparently self-contradictory being should be considered trustworthy). It would be some sort of demiurge and whatever mechanism or principle set the moral norms would be if anything closer to being 'God' than it would. If there was something that independently of that deity set moral norms that weren't objective, how if at all does that differ from other forms of moral relativism or moral nihilism? I grant that it's not by any means self-evident that creating the universe would give a deity the right to establish moral norms but I don't see where else in a divinely created universe moral norms could have come from, without positing either that the deity that created it is in some way not omnipotent and has less than complete power over it or that the moral norms are not objective. I don't see any options for a theistic universe having any other setup than its creator deity establishing moral norms or morality being entirely subjective, and neither of those provide any real basis on which to call the creator deity 'evil'.

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The last sentence of this paragraph is as far as I'm concerned and as far as I can tell manifestly untrue, in that the mere fact that non-theist metaethicists exist renders the issue such that I'm...really not sure why you'd claim that, actually. Metaethics is just the discussion of by what process one distinguishes good from bad. The idea of 'moral realism vs. moral non-realism' as a dichotomy or an argument is probably most people's idea of The Big Metaethical Question, and it's completely false to claim that that's an issue that only religious people raise. That doesn't, of course, mean that it's not an 'ivory tower' issue--it is--but I don't understand why whether or not an issue is 'ivory tower' has any bearing on whether or not it's a legitimate subject, unless one's view of the world is thoroughgoingly pragmatist.

Regarding afleitch's second post: He's in my opinion entirely right about the near-impossibility of reconciling some of the events described in the Bible with the generally-stated moral propositions according to which God is 'supposed' to operate. That's what I meant by saying that divine command theory leads down some pathways to which my heart doesn't exactly thrill. It requires either accepting the idea of the sort of divine moral relativism that he's describing (not appealing) or approaching Christianity as primarily a series of philosophical and mystical exercises that either disclaims or takes no position on the historical truth of what would for a lot of people be uncomfortably large sections of the Bible (certainly less unappealing than the first option. By far). This is why I think Christians who take moral philosophy seriously should be just as leery of the idea of the Bible as a morally unimpeachable and entirely literally true text as non-Christians are.

(I don't quite understand on what basis afleitch is claiming (if this in fact is what he's claiming, which I'm not sure of either) that not containing a mechanism for change makes a system of morals more relativist, though.)

I think I should mention at this point that I'm not claiming that divine command and ideal observer are the only metaethical theories that make sense to me at all. Like I said, not-necessarily-theistic ethical non-naturalism of the G.E. Moore variety also makes sense, more or less, and I have to admit that complete moral relativism and emotivism do too. In particular, the reason why when choosing my stance from among these I reject emotivism is...ironically...pretty much emotive, actually.
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Foucaulf
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« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2014, 07:54:30 PM »

Let me try to answer your questions in two ways. (I'm starting with metaethics in general but I'll work my way up)

In one way, metaethics asks: "what is the basis for our moral judgment?" After all, just saying that something's wrong doesn't immediately imply anything, and especially not so if you take away the concepts of sin, salvation, divine goodness and all. In response to your saying something's wrong, nothing stops me from saying that thing's right. Now we disagree. In what way could this disagreement be resolved?

At first, in order to defend their views, the individuals may appeal to some personal anecdote, data or whatever (nothing ethical in itself). Take a step deeper, and the individual may appeal to some value (like the value of life, or of freedom, or of our family). Take another step deeper, and we ask how we could justify why our values matter to someone who doesn't believe in those values.

The biggest divergence from religious metaethics is naturalism - the belief that there are right and wrong values, which best conform with natural laws. There's also anti-realism - that the values we believe are relative, and ethical argument alone cannot truly end disagreement. There's also non-cognitivism/emotivism.

You've mentioned all of this, of course, but all this setup is a way of presenting metaethics without recursion or self-reference. Starting from the simplest moral arguments, we look at facts mentioned in all those arguments or necessarily implied by them to deduce values. We then do the same for the values to deduce metaethical claims. If we agree on those metaethical claims, we are done. If not, we'll have to make more.


Now the second way. Metaethics also attempts to answer "do moral judgments mean anything?" This is the more important phrasing for secular ethics, since the easiest answer - "God says so" - is a no-no. This is also more important practically - today, we don't really get into ethical debate that often. There exist people who will respond to someone saying they're bad people not by "you are wrong", or by "you can't judge me," or "I do what I want," but by "let's not talk about it."

Against responses like these, we may have to discover a property of our world that makes moral judgments mean something, in that those judgments make reference to that property. Setting "God" aside again, we can choose from our emotions (expressivism), the laws of nature, governing our behaviour and those of others (naturalism), some unobservable but perceivable "goodness" (Moore's non-naturalistic moral realism), sense-data (empiricism), human will (Kantianism), and so forth.

Or you can say that a property of the world necessarily implies moral judgments don't mean anything, whether it is the total absence of moral facts (error theory), our inability to perceive knowledge (skepticism) and so forth.

No recursion seems to be needed here, since the process of evaluation is to propose the property and then see what kinds of sentences can be generated as a response to that proposal. This isn't self-referential as it is a possibly ill-formed algorithm.


Lot of this was cribbed from the Wiki/SEP pages, but those seem good. Caveat that I'm not a professional in any way on this.
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bedstuy
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« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2014, 07:56:44 PM »

By what sort of robust definition could a creator deity even be evil? If there was something that independently of that deity set any kind of objective moral norms, the deity wouldn't be capital-G 'God' as that term is conventionally philosophically defined because it wouldn't be omnipotent. There would be something identifiably existing outside its demesne, something that it likely wouldn't have created (I guess it's conceivably possible that a deity could establish moral norms according to which its own actions would be wicked, and that would indeed raise the question of why exactly the pronouncements such an apparently self-contradictory being should be considered trustworthy). It would be some sort of demiurge and whatever mechanism or principle set the moral norms would be if anything closer to being 'God' than it would. If there was something that independently of that deity set moral norms that weren't objective, how if at all does that differ from other forms of moral relativism or moral nihilism? I grant that it's not by any means self-evident that creating the universe would give a deity the right to establish moral norms but I don't see where else in a divinely created universe moral norms could have come from, without positing either that the deity that created it is in some way not omnipotent and has less than complete power over it or that the moral norms are not objective. I don't see any options for a theistic universe having any other setup than its creator deity establishing moral norms or morality being entirely subjective, and neither of those provide any real basis on which to call the creator deity 'evil'.

Point one, your writing style is needs some work.  Try not using excessive jargon or run-on sentences so people can understand what you're saying.

My point is that being a God doesn't give you any necessary right to determine ethics.  There's no evidence about the characteristics of God or Gods so resort to them to explain anything is basically worthless.  As far as illustrating my point, think of a Greek God that was evil like Hades.  What if Hades was the God that did the creation of the Universe?  And, the real point I was making was that we could perfectly well disagree with a God about ethics.  I don't see why not.  It's just that God provides no explanatory weight, because God is purely conjectural and we can't make any assumption about what a God could or would or might be like.  God can never explain anything, because we can make no factually grounded assumptions about the nature of God or Gods.

The last sentence of this paragraph is as far as I'm concerned and as far as I can tell manifestly untrue, in that the mere fact that non-theist metaethicists exist renders the issue such that I'm...really not sure why you'd claim that, actually. Metaethics is just the discussion of by what process one distinguishes good from bad. The idea of 'moral realism vs. moral non-realism' as a dichotomy or an argument is probably most people's idea of The Big Metaethical Question, and it's completely false to claim that that's an issue that only religious people raise. That doesn't, of course, mean that it's not an 'ivory tower' issue--it is--but I don't understand why whether or not an issue is 'ivory tower' has any bearing on whether or not it's a legitimate subject, unless one's view of the world is thoroughgoingly pragmatist.

I can't see how this underlying question would trouble you in determining the ethical path of behavior in a situation in your life.  So, I think it's just needless abstraction.  But, to elaborate, here's my basic take on what I think you're asking again. 

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.
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Nathan
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« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2014, 08:25:19 PM »
« Edited: December 16, 2014, 08:43:18 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

Foucaulf, I knew most of that already, but thanks for presenting it in a more systematic way than I'm accustomed to seeing it. That's genuinely helpful.

bedstuy, your response to my point about whether or not a creator deity could coherently be called 'evil' does answer the question I was asking, so thank you for that. I'm certainly willing to concede that a creator deity could be 'evil' on the basis of disagreement with a system of moral beliefs developed by a creature through some means not based on the deity's opinions. I don't agree that that would actually be the case, but I now understand the process by which a legitimate, defensible perspective could be developed that would consider it the case.

The last part of that paragraph kind of presupposes some assumptions about epistemology with which I don't agree and am probably not going to agree, but that's neither here nor there. For now I'm not trying to convince or be convinced, just to understand the concepts. (Also Hades isn't a very good example of an evil Greek god, but I get that that's not really germane to your point.)

Regarding the other subject you brought up: I write the way I write because I enjoy constructing complicated sentences--it's a deliberate consideration, not a side-effect of something else--and it mirrors my actual thought processes better than a simpler style would. I'm not inclined to change it. Thank you for your opinion.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2014, 09:26:26 PM »
« Edited: December 17, 2014, 12:43:42 AM by True Federalist »

Otherwise acts of genocide in the Old Testament for example, would remain unjustified.

What I think both you and Nathan find so unjustifiable in the Old Testament is because you place a much much higher value on individuality than its authors did.  You find it unjust that others suffer for the sins of others because you see them as distinct individuals who should be judged entirely based upon their own merits and faults.  Yet it is clear that the Old Testament authors did not view the world that way.  Children even unto the third and fourth generation are punished for the sins of their ancestor because they are that ancestor.  The commandment to honor your father and mother is also a commandment to honor yourself, for you are a part of your father and you are a part of your mother, and it was meant it in a way considerably deeper than the mere symbolism most of us would understand such a thing.

The place in the Bible where I think that viewpoint finds its strongest expression is in Genesis 24, where Abraham's servant is seeking to acquire a bride for Isaac.  It's clear from the context that while negotiating for Rebekah that servant is speaking with Rebekah's mother and brother and that physically her father Bethuel is not present, possibly because he is absent, but more likely because his body is dead, and yet the agreement is made with Bethuel in the form of his wife and his eldest son.  Bethuel is dead but long live Bethuel.  Indeed, Bethuel lives even today via the descendants of Isaac and Rebekah.

Where the New Testament differs from the Old Testament on this is not in abandoning the idea of collective identity, but in emphasizing its logical conclusion.  We humans are all sons of Adam and thus are all one.  Our enemies are us.  Yet that doesn't negate the possibility of conflict with other humans as we seek to maximize the well being of Adam, merely that we should look beyond merely the interests of our selves, our families, our clans, or even our nations, but to the interest of us all.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2014, 09:32:51 PM »

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.

To be honest, this comes across as a shallow justification for your preconceived moral beliefs; in effect, what you're doing is appealing to human tradition and to "science" as the basis for your morality. But what if I made a conscious decision to break with human tradition and with my biology, and commit an act that, according to you, those things should lead me to believe is objectively immoral? What would you say to convince me that this is the improper course of action?
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bedstuy
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« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2014, 10:36:24 PM »

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.

To be honest, this comes across as a shallow justification for your preconceived moral beliefs; in effect, what you're doing is appealing to human tradition and to "science" as the basis for your morality. But what if I made a conscious decision to break with human tradition and with my biology, and commit an act that, according to you, those things should lead me to believe is objectively immoral? What would you say to convince me that this is the improper course of action?

It's hard to say if you're not specifically saying what action you're taking. 

And, I think you're misinterpreting me.  I don't think science creates an ethical framework.  I think the basic facts surrounding our human existence inform our basic ethical intuitions and give them content.  It's not so much "science" as the material facts of our human community and relationships. 
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afleitch
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« Reply #11 on: December 17, 2014, 07:37:16 AM »

Most of this makes sense so far, especially afleitch's first post, although I'm not sure I can really tell whether he's positing ethical naturalism or ethical non-naturalism, since he expresses approbation for the idea that 'good' is irreducible but then describes it as a function of what seems to me an awful lot like dependent arising out of human subjectivity. (If he's willing to ascribe that term to what he's discussing, I actually immediately understand it a lot better, because that's a concept with which I'm in other contexts already familiar from studying Buddhism, and envisioning how one would apply it to ethical propositions isn't really that big of a cognitive leap for me.)

What I was attempting to draw together was the fact that ‘good’ as a concept is irreducible precisely because of human subjectivity; there is no other ‘subject’ by which it can ever be viewed, there is no other ‘self’ to whom it could apply. Therefore while the study (or, more correctly I should think, the experience of ethics) is plausible, because we face ethical choices constantly because we are human. However it cannot exist outside the human experience and therefore is always going to be subjective. It’s supposed to be subjective because all human experience is. That is what life is; life isn’t something you have. It’s something you do.

We consider what is 'good' because we can think, we can think because we are sentient, we are sentient because it is to our advantage that we have evolved to be that way. If we were not sentient, we would not contemplate what is 'good'. If we were more base then we could feel the physical as pleasure and pain and benefit, but could not contemplate fully if these are 'good'

Which brings me to religious-ethics, or at least ethics with a godhead. Given that intelligence is a product of evolution and even thought is dependent on matter and energy, there is no reason to believe that it can exist independently of the physical form. Even if we delete this definition to allow us to run with the idea, then evidently we would still be dealing with a higher ‘self’, to such an extent it does not exist as nor require a corporeal form. It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us. Nor can it endow us with its own pre-set ethics and then ‘press start.’ Because that is not how ethics appear to be imparted.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2014, 08:21:09 AM »

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.

To be honest, this comes across as a shallow justification for your preconceived moral beliefs; in effect, what you're doing is appealing to human tradition and to "science" as the basis for your morality. But what if I made a conscious decision to break with human tradition and with my biology, and commit an act that, according to you, those things should lead me to believe is objectively immoral? What would you say to convince me that this is the improper course of action?

It's hard to say if you're not specifically saying what action you're taking. 

And, I think you're misinterpreting me.  I don't think science creates an ethical framework.  I think the basic facts surrounding our human existence inform our basic ethical intuitions and give them content.  It's not so much "science" as the material facts of our human community and relationships. 

I'm certainly not going to argue that our experiences don't inform our conception of right and wrong; what I disagree with is the assertion that our experiences will necessarily lead everyone, everywhere to conclude that a common handful of things are immoral. For example: a hunter-gatherer has a self-interest in cultivating a sense of empathy and compassion towards fellow members of his tribe. However, he also has an interest in denying those same virtues to members of an alien tribe. How would you go about convincing this individual to value the lives of his competitors to the same degree that he values the lives of his neighbors and his kin?
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bedstuy
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« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2014, 09:31:33 AM »

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.

To be honest, this comes across as a shallow justification for your preconceived moral beliefs; in effect, what you're doing is appealing to human tradition and to "science" as the basis for your morality. But what if I made a conscious decision to break with human tradition and with my biology, and commit an act that, according to you, those things should lead me to believe is objectively immoral? What would you say to convince me that this is the improper course of action?

It's hard to say if you're not specifically saying what action you're taking. 

And, I think you're misinterpreting me.  I don't think science creates an ethical framework.  I think the basic facts surrounding our human existence inform our basic ethical intuitions and give them content.  It's not so much "science" as the material facts of our human community and relationships. 

I'm certainly not going to argue that our experiences don't inform our conception of right and wrong; what I disagree with is the assertion that our experiences will necessarily lead everyone, everywhere to conclude that a common handful of things are immoral. For example: a hunter-gatherer has a self-interest in cultivating a sense of empathy and compassion towards fellow members of his tribe. However, he also has an interest in denying those same virtues to members of an alien tribe. How would you go about convincing this individual to value the lives of his competitors to the same degree that he values the lives of his neighbors and his kin?

How is that different from our view of ethics today?   We still care more about our family and friends and have no absolute rule against conflict with other groups.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #14 on: December 17, 2014, 09:45:18 AM »

The basis for ethics is facts and circumstances of being human, as established by the laws of physics and biology.  We have a limited life-span, we experience pain, we have emotions, we share basic characteristics with other humans.  Those are just the circumstances of being human as they happen to be.  They inevitably lead to a set of ethical precepts which all humans seem to agree to.

To be honest, this comes across as a shallow justification for your preconceived moral beliefs; in effect, what you're doing is appealing to human tradition and to "science" as the basis for your morality. But what if I made a conscious decision to break with human tradition and with my biology, and commit an act that, according to you, those things should lead me to believe is objectively immoral? What would you say to convince me that this is the improper course of action?

It's hard to say if you're not specifically saying what action you're taking. 

And, I think you're misinterpreting me.  I don't think science creates an ethical framework.  I think the basic facts surrounding our human existence inform our basic ethical intuitions and give them content.  It's not so much "science" as the material facts of our human community and relationships. 

I'm certainly not going to argue that our experiences don't inform our conception of right and wrong; what I disagree with is the assertion that our experiences will necessarily lead everyone, everywhere to conclude that a common handful of things are immoral. For example: a hunter-gatherer has a self-interest in cultivating a sense of empathy and compassion towards fellow members of his tribe. However, he also has an interest in denying those same virtues to members of an alien tribe. How would you go about convincing this individual to value the lives of his competitors to the same degree that he values the lives of his neighbors and his kin?

How is that different from our view of ethics today?   We still care more about our family and friends and have no absolute rule against conflict with other groups.

What I'm getting at is more than just caring more for members of your own social group than for members of a foreign one. I'm saying that our hypothetical hunter-gatherer has no reason to extend any degree of compassion or humanity to members of a rival tribe - indeed, it's in his interest to dehumanize them, as that makes it easier for him to kill them should he feel that it's in his interest to do so. Are you saying that you find nothing objectionable in this line of thinking?
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bedstuy
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« Reply #15 on: December 17, 2014, 10:03:39 AM »

I don't really understand why it's necessarily in a primitive human's interest to dehumanize anyone outside their immediate family and social group. 
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Mopsus
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« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2014, 10:33:23 AM »

I don't really understand why it's necessarily in a primitive human's interest to dehumanize anyone outside their immediate family and social group. 

It isn't just in a primitive human's interest; it can be in our interest, too.

Let's say that you're a goat herder living in the Negev. A stranger happens to be sojourning in your land, and he asks you for a meal and a place to sleep. You're under no obligation to grant these to him, and since you're unlikely to ever see him again, the discomfort that feeding and boarding him would create outweighs the discomfort that you'll experience while turning him away. Since you don't believe that there's an objectively right way to treat one's fellows, you do turn him away, and you don't feel bad about it, either.

Incidentally, your Bible-believing neighbor happily provides the stranger with what he asks for.

A more modern example would be the homeless man begging for alms. Most of us would move past him with a guilty conscience if we didn't at least give him a token donation, but to the totally rational individualist, recognizing that he derives no material benefit from the exchange renders such feelings of guilt a foreign concept. How would you convince this person that he ought to feel otherwise?
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afleitch
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« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2014, 11:13:09 AM »

I don't really understand why it's necessarily in a primitive human's interest to dehumanize anyone outside their immediate family and social group. 

It isn't just in a primitive human's interest; it can be in our interest, too.

Let's say that you're a goat herder living in the Negev. A stranger happens to be sojourning in your land, and he asks you for a meal and a place to sleep. You're under no obligation to grant these to him, and since you're unlikely to ever see him again, the discomfort that feeding and boarding him would create outweighs the discomfort that you'll experience while turning him away. Since you don't believe that there's an objectively right way to treat one's fellows, you do turn him away, and you don't feel bad about it, either.

Incidentally, your Bible-believing neighbor happily provides the stranger with what he asks for.

A more modern example would be the homeless man begging for alms. Most of us would move past him with a guilty conscience if we didn't at least give him a token donation, but to the totally rational individualist, recognizing that he derives no material benefit from the exchange renders such feelings of guilt a foreign concept. How would you convince this person that he ought to feel otherwise?


Then why is it that I have friends? Why is it that I have a husband? Why is it that these people come from outside my family and my social groups if as you say, it’s in my interest to dehumanise them? After all, they were once people I did not know and had no reason to trust when I initially encountered them. If what you say is true, we wouldn’t go out our way to fraternise with anyone…
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bedstuy
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« Reply #18 on: December 17, 2014, 11:20:27 AM »

I don't really understand why it's necessarily in a primitive human's interest to dehumanize anyone outside their immediate family and social group. 

It isn't just in a primitive human's interest; it can be in our interest, too.

Let's say that you're a goat herder living in the Negev. A stranger happens to be sojourning in your land, and he asks you for a meal and a place to sleep. You're under no obligation to grant these to him, and since you're unlikely to ever see him again, the discomfort that feeding and boarding him would create outweighs the discomfort that you'll experience while turning him away. Since you don't believe that there's an objectively right way to treat one's fellows, you do turn him away, and you don't feel bad about it, either.

Incidentally, your Bible-believing neighbor happily provides the stranger with what he asks for.

A more modern example would be the homeless man begging for alms. Most of us would move past him with a guilty conscience if we didn't at least give him a token donation, but to the totally rational individualist, recognizing that he derives no material benefit from the exchange renders such feelings of guilt a foreign concept. How would you convince this person that he ought to feel otherwise?

I don't follow your logic at all or why you're contrasting Christians with "individualist/rationalist" Ayn Rand types.  I never said self-interest is the sole human motivating force and it evidently is not.  And, indeed, religious people are no kinder than non-religious people, so I'm just at a loss here. 
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #19 on: December 17, 2014, 11:26:39 AM »

Given that intelligence is a product of evolution and even thought is dependent on matter and energy, there is no reason to believe that it can exist independently of the physical form. Even if we delete this definition to allow us to run with the idea, then evidently we would still be dealing with a higher ‘self’, to such an extent it does not exist as nor require a corporeal form. It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us.

Doesn't appear to me that you've deleted the definition.  To me it looks like you're still holding on to it, even as you claim to be considering what if you didn't.  You still are equating the self with an individual corporeal form, otherwise I fail to see how you can assert "It is not us."
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Mopsus
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« Reply #20 on: December 17, 2014, 11:45:03 AM »

Then why is it that I have friends? Why is it that I have a husband? Why is it that these people come from outside my family and my social groups if as you say, it’s in my interest to dehumanise them? After all, they were once people I did not know and had no reason to trust when I initially encountered them. If what you say is true, we wouldn’t go out our way to fraternise with anyone…

Your husband, the people who are now your friends - you had an impulse to bring them into your life, you acted on that impulse, and now they're all a part of your immediate social circle. But not everyone will have the same impulse that you did; some will even feel the impulse to act cruelly towards the people that you know and love. Since you've rejected any objective ground for morality, it would be up to you to argue that it isn't in the prospective offender's self-interest to commit whatever cruelty. When you're incapable of dissuading them, however... that's when problems arise.

I don't follow your logic at all or why you're contrasting Christians with "individualist/rationalist" Ayn Rand types.  I never said self-interest is the sole human motivating force and it evidently is not.

You're right, it isn't. But for some, self-interest is a more important factor in their calculus than feelings of empathy or compassion. That's why the only way that someone with your worldview can convince those people to do the "right thing" is by arguing that doing the "right thing" is in their material self-interest. Which isn't always easy.

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You get this impression because many religious people adhere to a shallow version of their faith, where they're religious only when they feel that being so serves them materially; at the same time, secularists by and large adhere to religious systems of morality, except that they discard the parts that inconvenience them.
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afleitch
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« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2014, 12:01:50 PM »

Given that intelligence is a product of evolution and even thought is dependent on matter and energy, there is no reason to believe that it can exist independently of the physical form. Even if we delete this definition to allow us to run with the idea, then evidently we would still be dealing with a higher ‘self’, to such an extent it does not exist as nor require a corporeal form. It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us.

Doesn't appear to me that you've deleted the definition.  To me it looks like you're still holding on to it, even as you claim to be considering what if you didn't.  You still are equating the self with an individual corporeal form, otherwise I fail to see how you can assert "It is not us."

I don’t know what you mean. What I said is that I don’t play around with the idea of the ‘mind of god’ because the idea of anything non corporeal having a ‘mind’ is not supported by anything other than a belief that something can. We can know that because we have a mind and we have that mind because we have a brain and energy within it that allows us to have a thought process. But I’ve suspended my position (and I hold that position because there is no evidence for non-corporeal minds or ‘will’) so that I can actually talk about the ‘idea’ of god and the idea of ‘religious ethics’ which are not concepts that I think are actually worthy of the attention that they are often given.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #22 on: December 17, 2014, 03:24:16 PM »

Andrew, it looks like an unclear pronoun reference in what I quoted earlier was the cause of some confusion.  I was taking "it" as referring to "the mind" and you meant "the mind of God".  But even so, I fail to accept your assertion that if God exists, he must lack a physical form.  Granted, the Abrahamic religions generally reject the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, but that still leaves open pantheism, pandeism, panentheism, and no doubt other concepts that also posit a physical yet non-human deity.

Assume for a moment that God is pantheistic.  Your assertion that "It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us." would be analogous to "A human cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that its pinky finger takes because it is not a pinky finger." Now I don't know about you, but I think I can judge my pinky.  But even if you disagree, then what about the Christian belief that God became Man in the form of Jesus?  Even if one asserts that one can only be justly judged by one's peers, then if Jesus were indeed both Man and God, it would seem to me that he meets your requirements to be a judge of human actions despite being God.
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afleitch
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« Reply #23 on: December 17, 2014, 04:11:45 PM »

Andrew, it looks like an unclear pronoun reference in what I quoted earlier was the cause of some confusion.  I was taking "it" as referring to "the mind" and you meant "the mind of God".  But even so, I fail to accept your assertion that if God exists, he must lack a physical form.  Granted, the Abrahamic religions generally reject the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, but that still leaves open pantheism, pandeism, panentheism, and no doubt other concepts that also posit a physical yet non-human deity.

Assume for a moment that God is pantheistic.  Your assertion that "It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us." would be analogous to "A human cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that its pinky finger takes because it is not a pinky finger." Now I don't know about you, but I think I can judge my pinky.  But even if you disagree, then what about the Christian belief that God became Man in the form of Jesus?  Even if one asserts that one can only be justly judged by one's peers, then if Jesus were indeed both Man and God, it would seem to me that he meets your requirements to be a judge of human actions despite being God.

Regardless of whether god has a physical or not physical form it is a god. It is not a human. If it spends a brief sojourn in a human body, it's still not 'a human' as by being able to do such a thing, to come and go as it pleases from form to form, clearly demonstrates. If you wish to pose the question that 'everything is divine' through some form of pantheism, your analogy of the pinky finger doesn't really link to that. It is a part of my body that is controlled by the brain. It cannot be judged independently of me because it is me. It doesn't do anything by itself. In a pantheistic view, if everything is essentially an expression of the divine and every action comes from the divine then the actions still cannot be judged because there's now nothing outside that magisterium. There is no higher or lower order. I am as divine as a rock, I am as divine as the divine. I cannot judge because all actions, all ethics are now divine.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
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« Reply #24 on: December 17, 2014, 07:06:20 PM »

Okay, yeah, I was just going to bring up the Incarnation myself so thanks for covering that.
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