Diogenes the Cynic

The question is not whether it's "reasonable," but whether it can be arrived at by reason. There's a difference. Human ethical systems are a by-product of our status as a species which has evolved to survive in groups (as opposed to individuals) and "culture" is merely an evolved behavior which serves to preserve the stability of those groups. Humans have ethical systems for the same reason that beavers build dams. They're evolved that way.
They have a moral system, of sorts, or at least an operating system. It just operates purely by selfish motivations rather than by empathy. While empathetic responses are biologically wired into the brain (and are largely responsible for the almost universal human impulse to behave "ethically" towards others) this wiring can be altered by early trauma (Amaleq, you probably know more about this then I do) and that empathetic response never develops. That's how you get sociopaths. I guess that the existence of sociopaths would be an automatic disproof of the assertion that all humans are instilled with an inherent ethical sense. It's a biolgical component of the species which devlops in most individuals (enough to create agreed upon cultural expectations and proscriptions) but not all. In the case of the latter, it is perfectly pragmatic and reasonable for a culture to create (without any necessary regard to religious tenets) sanctions designed to deter those individuals from destabalizing their societies. The most effective way to do so is to make it in their own self-interest to avoid breaking the rules.

Amaleq13

Good. That has been my point from the start.

Simplistic? Aren't fundamental assumptions "simplistic" by definition and design?

Then they are rejecting the stated fundamental assumption and, therefore, irrelevant to my point.

That is not an idea I have proffered.

Good. That is, however, what Gamera is claiming and I am denying.

I was referring to this post.

If you think this follow from my post, you are mistaken.

gregor

Carin
Just so you don't think I've missed your Sunday-School, chain-letter, Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners" fear-fest, for every mocking individual you post, I could site ten faithful victims (e.g. children with pontine brain stem tumors that slowly watch themselves become paralyzed and die, church buses that get struck by fuel trucks, tsunamis that wipe out villages).

Thanks, but no thanks.

pharoah

Unless rlogan has very recently converted, I'm sure that his entire post was a wicked satire. :devil3:

Diogenes the Cynic

In that case, color me whooshed. He did a good job of it. It sounded totally authentic.

fatpie42

If you agree with me like you keep stating then why did you call my post incomprehensible gibberish. That was what I was replying to...

Amaleq13

That you recently indicated that you accept my point doesn't change my opinion of your earlier post regardless of whether you believe they convey the same sentiment. :wave:

Gamera

Rational thought -- a true triumph of the Enlightenment -- has nothing but a tangential relationship to ethics and cannot construct values. Reason can only be put in the service of values already at hand, though people are adept at pretending that various values (usually the most vicious) are rational.

The obvious ease with which reason can be coopted is seen in the Holocaust, where rational Germans thought they were being rational in eliminated all nonAryans in a calculated and rational way.

Gamera

You've made my point. Read the Republic and see what classical pagan ethics, bereft of the sense of the other leads to. The Republic is the blue print for the first totalitarian government were people are exploited in a rational way for the ends of an elite.

So were the Greeks ethical nihilists? No, they rationalized the ethics of exploitation that marked the pre-Christian world. That's hardly something to brag about, and you question doesn't reach the issue: did classic pagan culture condone, rationalize and privilege the exploitation of others. The answer is yes any way you cut it.

Gamera

The problem is moral codes derived by reason can rationalize anything.

Thus, in principle, if your goal is to minimize your work, reason can defend a slave society, where you force others to work for you. Of course that means condoning the exploitation of others, but that's not in principle inconsistent with reason. One might argue there are more effective ways to minimize your labor than enslaving others -- fine, the point is there is nothing in principle unreasonable about slavery if in fact it is the most effective way to reach your goal.

In short morality based on reason is by definition amoral, since by definition it doesn't not exclude the exploitation of others, which is the point of ethics.

But accepting the ethical standing of the other is a concept invented by Judaism, and passed on to Christianity in an even more radical form (condensed in the admonition to love even your enemies).

So, my point is you are either engaging in a back formation -- you have assumed certain ethical principles generated by Christianity and pretended they are the result of rational thought; or even worse, you have to admit that it's OK to exploit others if that's where reason leads us.