Kent Stevens

What I had in mind with the term reason refers to both inductive and deductive reasoning. We can look at syllogisms which demonstrate deductive reasoning. Take a standard example of a syllogism.

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

This type of reasoning should not be culturally relative but generally true across time. Hopefully, various forms of logic and mathematics which rely on reasoning are not culturally relative. There is a sense that the Pythagoras Theorem is true across cultures and possibly even aliens may have the equivalent mathematical statement. Even aliens possibly reason in a mathematical and a logical sense.

I do not deny that sometimes people use sloppy reasoning. That is why there are a lot of different logical fallacies given. But if people are careful in their argument they may be able to avoid these pitfalls most of the time.

Reasoning should be distinguished from critical thinking which is more dependent on culture and time and place. If you are in a culture that promotes faith you are much less likely to question things and criticise ideas. If you live in a democracy where science is accepted you may be encouraged to be skeptical about some things.

jpbrooks

Sorry for missing your reply, Kent.

Thank you for the definitions.
There don't appear to be any criteria, other than "feelings", for determining whether an idea is "basic". Without rational criteria, any idea can be held to be "basic".

My point was made in response to your comment about the justification of morality. The question, "why should I be moral?", can be answered from the standpoint of more than one area of inquiry, sociology being one such area of inquiry.

zootwoman

does altruism really have no place in reality?

Kent Stevens

Of course if anyone labeled any idea as basic this would be a slight abuse of language. For example the statement "I like to look around on the Internet" is not basic. It is not self-evident or an obvious truth to everyone either. This is being consistent with the ordinary meanings of basic, self-evident, or obvious.

To be classified as completely basic an idea can not be further justified at all easily. A completely basic idea when questioned should result in something like it "just is" from the viewer of the idea. A completely basic idea should be dead obvious.

It is partly subjective what are the completely basic ideas are. I speak from my own experience when I say that reason, justice, happiness, or wants are completely basic. Other ideas such as the right to liberty may be thought as close to being completely basic. We can justify the right to liberty but is this something we want to spend hours doing so? Some people would think that some idea of god would be basic but I do not think it as completely basic as reason is for example. Someone could use reason to try to prove the existence of god.

If I try to justify reason I seem to get into trouble. Reason seems to work, but how do I believe this. I use examples and use reasoning to deductively conclude that reason works. But I seem to be using reason to prove reason, which is circular, which is not valid. So I feel it just easier to accept reason as basic and without need of further justification.

In terms of morality we could ask "why do we not do the wrong thing"? Why don't we commit murder, or abuse others, or steal for example. I could get into some justification why I do not want to do wrong? These justifications could use other moral statements or statements that refer doing right as being benefical. However I do not really want to further justify why I do not want to do wrong, because the justification has to stop somewhere. I take this basic idea as referring to morality or justice.

In terms of enjoyment I might enjoy certain things. But if we take the statement "why do I want to do what I enjoy", I just tend to give up in terms of justification. If I used morality to justify doing what I enjoy then morality still needs to be justified. Enjoyment meaning roughly the same thing as happiness.

In terms of wants I do not feel like further justifying why "I choose to do what I want". Because I consider doing what you want as a general basic idea.

Maybe others can come up with suitable justifications for the following questions if they can be bothered.
Why do I reason?
Why do I not do that which is wrong?
Why do I do what I enjoy doing?
Why do I do what I want to do?

If someone does justify these statements they will note that their reasoning must stop at some point. We are not forever giving reasons for straight forward thoughts.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]</p>

excreationist

It's just an excessive "connectedness" craving.

To seek connectedness and newness cravings - if you are talking about philosophical reasoning. Otherwise it would be to solve problems which would relate to fundamental desires. e.g. "how can I lose weight?" is motivated by the desire to be accepted by others - seek connectedness.

It decreases our feelings of connectedness - we have an empathy for others. There is also the threat of the consequences - e.g. embarassment (loss of social connectedness)

Your brain looks at some possible courses of action and selects the one that maximizes pleasure and/or minimizes pain. And then your brain does this course of action. So whatever you do is what your brain determined to maximize pleasure and/or minimize pain. If pleasure is involved - especially newness pleasure (thrills) then you enjoy it.

Your brain automatically does it.

How about those answers? And you seemed to have missed reading my first post in this thread.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

jpbrooks

Neither is the claim, "I like to do what is moral".

An idea that is obvious to its "viewer" is not necessarily obvious to everyone (or even anyone) else. So, at this point, we still have no criterion other than "feelings" to determine whether ideas are basic.

Now, here we do have a criterion that doesn't appear to be arbitrary. An idea or concept, whose application cannot be further justified without circularity, is "completely basic". Thus, according to this criterion, since questions like, "why should I reason", and "why should I be moral" (where the term "should" in the question refers to moral obligation), cannot be answered without applying "reason" and "morality" respectively, "reason" and "moral obligation" are "completely basic". In fact, "reason", for example, is such a broad category that the process of "justification" itself requires it. (Perhaps for that reason, you would say that "reason" is "self evident".)

Ok. But if the "justification" of morality is not to be circular, then morality cannot be "completely basic" according to the criterion alluded to above.

And this is precisely where arbitrariness creeps in.

Why?
The questions that you posed had to do with your personal preferences; not about obligation (i.e., what "ought" to be done or deemed "good" or "right"), which is the subject matter of morality.

Again, this is an arbitrary "stopping point". Other people, when faced with such questions, might wish to go further (out of curiosity perhaps) and seek to justify why they want to do what they enjoy.

But again, it is not obvious that everyone would choose that as a "stopping point" for justification.

Theophage

Not only do I agree with excreationist's posts, but I find it fascinating the amout of complexity in the behaviors exhibited by brains to simply satisy the "seek pleasure/avoid pain" rule.

I think it is inevitable that as we ask the deep questions of "why" and actually get answers, that we will perpetually respond with "is that it?"

Daniel "Theophage" Clark

Kent Stevens

I think that the desire for happiness is a general principle that sometimes does not apply. It is analogous to liberty in that it is difficult to apply in all cases. If pleasure and pain is applied to every action I do it does not give much more information than I decided to do a certain action. I am trying to avoid tautologies such as I do because I do.

Examples of pleasure and pain would have to include heroic virtues as well as cowardly vices. The objection of heroism could be given to happiness. This is not that we do pursue happiness, rather it is that we may do things that may go against what some might consider enjoyable.

Consider those people who are astronuats going on space exploration. This could be thought to be an example of a heroic exploit. For there are perhaps thousands of ways to die in a space rocket either quickly or slowly. There may be a fire in the confines of the rocket before it is launched. The rocket could explode completely when it is launched. One of the thousands of mechanical and computational aspects of a rocket could fail. This could result in suffocation, exposure to vacuum, explosion, going off course, etc. All these possibilities go against what is usually constituted as happiness. But if we ask astronauts why they do what they do they may talk about things like excitement, discovery, doing things for their countries.

Someone could use different terms that roughly refer to the terms that I am using. We could have connectedness and newness being as part of happiness. If we justify reason and morality with connectedness or newness we could say that we are using happiness to justify reason and morality. If we use pleasure and pain to justify happiness this is like justifying happiness with happiness.

Unfortunately perhaps we do not always get what we want or what makes us happy. If someone is holding a gun to your head you may not end up doing what you would normally want or what would normally make you happy. This person would have taken away your freedom to do things.

Kent Stevens

Some of the proposed basic ideas are truth, reason, morality, happiness, and wants.

Now most people would not want the opposite of these things falsehood, no reasoning, immorality, unhappiness, and not what is wanted.

This objection that some things that are obvious to some may not be obvious to others could be applied to a number of things. It may not neccessarily obvious that murder is wrong, or that liberty is good to have. But these things may be obvious to most people in a modern western civilisation. If people cannot agree on the idea of liberty it may be hard for a modern democracy to function as certain people may grab power for themselves.

We can justify happiness or the desire for truth. There is nothing to stop us from doing so. I think that most people do not have to dig deeply to justify the desire for truth or the desire for happiness. To justify something like the earth is only 10,000 years old we might have to write a large book to justify this.

Perhaps all aspects of morality could be thought to be based on feelings according to some. The right to life could be based on feeling. Property rights could be be thought just to be based on feeling.

Now Jefferson said that there were certain self-evident truths. These include equality and the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How do we know that these things are self-evident? These ideas may be obvious to most modern westerners but not to Hitler perhaps or people from other societies. Perhaps it easier to say that certain obvious ideas apply to the majority of people in a given society.

The problem that there are some basic ideas is a similar problem to there being self-evident truths. Maybe it is easiest if we come up with our own individual interpretation of what is basic or what is self-evident. For if we get 30 people in a room to determine what is self-evident we might get 30 slightly different interpretations of what is self-evident. However, if people interact with each other for communication, commerce, or governmental reasons we do need some sort of generally accepted ideas.

We could do a sociological survey to see if some people want certain things. They may want different things but they may agree on some things. Will someone say I want falsehood in these survey? They will probably not say that I want unhappiness or I want to be immoral. The majority of people will not say I do not use reason. I suggest that most people will agree with most of the proposed basic ideas. Of course you may still disagree with these ideas.

excreationist

I never said anything about "happiness". I said that some part of our brain gives emotional responses to stimuli and we get different pleasure and pain signals. So these are just signals but then our brain automatically seeks/repeats pleasure signals and avoids pain signals in the best way it knows how.
And pain is just the urge to avoid the pain signal (and the situation associated with it). This urge depends on the intensity of the signal. Humans also have an instinct to scream or cry in pain - this is used to inform others of the danger. Pleasure is the urge to repeat the pleasure signal and the situation associated with it. So the *only* reason why pleasure feels good is because our brain is compelled to repeat it - so therefore it is "desirable".

As I said earlier, different people naturally or learn to place different amounts of emphasis on the fundamental pleasures. But this would be deterministic. "Liberty" would involve "relief" if it was very new-found liberty. Later it would involve "newness". It might involve a lack of "connectedness" though (decrease in pleasure) if the old lifestyle was a very ingrained habit and liberty is too unfamiliar.

I mean "newness" and "connectedness" are partly in opposition - we usually like some of each. But some need lots of newness - otherwise they get bored. If people get too much newness, then they might suffer a lack of connectness (coherence/familiarity) and so feel a lack of pleasure. And if people just lack connectedness (a feeling of belonging) then they feel alienated. (These are just different words for things involving "newness" and "connectedness" pleasures)

No, there is more - you can weigh up the pleasure and pain signals about hypothetical situations. So if there is a moral dilemma you aren't acting externally. Pleasure and pain signals are a measure of the priority of situations to be sought/repeated or avoided by the brain.

So do you want a final answer or not? If you don't want a final answer, what is this topic about? Just to "prove" that there is no answer?

Yes, pleasure and pain signals can motivate socially acceptable and unacceptable behaviours.

I said there is a pleasure called "connectedness". This would be the motivator for heroism.

Well a really intense "newness" craving would motivate their desire for discovery and exploration. Maybe also an intense "relief" craving as well - so they like new things - involving *survival* or at least a struggle.

Stop talking about "happiness" please... it is such a vague term. Basically for us to think anything, we need goals - otherwise how would we know that one thought or course of action is more important than another? Fundamental pleasures and pains are just what are used to develop these complex goals, through a chain of associations that was learnt over that person's lifetime.

So do you think that morality is just whatever we have and it has no deeper reasons? I think it has a mechanistic basis that comes from our unique motivational systems and the strategies we've learnt about dealing with the world. (e.g. whether we've been "burned" by things and developed irrational phobias, or whether we've been overly rewarded by things in abnormal ways and developed fetishes, etc)

Of we don't. We might want to win the lottery but that doesn't mean we will. And what do you mean "makes us happy" anyway? Do you mean pleasure or contentment or what?

Of course... your decision making process takes your environment into account.