Alonzo Fyfe

How can something not of the natural world have effects?

Are we talking about some sort of metaphysical dualism here -- some sort of unnatural or supernatural "thing" or "force" that yet has the capacity to generate the types of muscle movements that cause intentional action?

I would find such a view as the God hypothesis.

And if they do not have effects -- if nothing in the physical world is ever moved as a result of moral value -- when we should simply disregard them entirely. If they have no effect, they are meaningless fantasy.

So, it seems, these are our only options. (1) Metaphysical dualism, (2) Fantasy, (3) Natural phenomena.

Alonzo Fyfe

dk

1st The statement relies entirely upon appearances disconnected from an model of causation.

Please translate into English.

Desires (with beliefs) cause intentions, which cause action. Desires are hypothetical constructs (like quarks) derived from theories that, themselves, aim to provide the best explanation to a set of observations, where the relevant observations are those of the agent's behavior.


2nd Its ambiguous because "good" lacks any relationship to a suitable or meaningful outcome.

I specifically related good to the fulfillment of desire. All (true) value claims describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. "Good" fulfills desires, "Bad" thwarts desires. Desires themselves can be good or bad according to their tendency to fulfill or thwart other desires.


3rd It degrades people to a zombie like automatons that play a copycat game.

"Degrades" is a value-laden term. The use of the term presupposes a theory of value. No degradation exists, because it is not possible to make something of a lower grade simply by describing what is true about it -- without making an actual change to it.



Morality serves as a platform to engage a reasonable person’s commitment so they might participate in life. In other words morality regulates conduct and relationships to empower people with the potential to overcome life's problems.

Nothing I wrote contradicts this.

Morality regulates conduct by regulating the acquisition of desires -- so that people tend to acquire desires that tend to full other desires, and tend not to acquire desires that thwart other desires. Thus reducing the problems that people encounter.


You haven’t addressed God, morality or homosexuality. Thirst is a desire, and I submit a person’s thirst for water, knowledge, intimacy and God direct people towards suitable goals and morality sets people on a reasonable course.

A desire for water is good, because those who do not drink tend to suffer the thwarting of many other desires.

A desire for knowledge is good because knowledge is a tool generally very useful in the quest to fulfill other desires.

A desire for intimacy is good; though its relationship to the fulfillment of other desires is more complex than most.

A desire for God is a waste of time, because the desire is self-thwarting. The person with a desire for God can never obtain what he desires, because there is no God. A person may come to BELIEVE that a desire for God is fulfilled, but this is akin to a person drinking sand and thinking it quenches his thirst, or think his desire for knowledge is fulfilled when all he learns are fiction and lies, or his desire for intimacy is fulfilled in a relationship with a person who is only using him and cares nothing about him as a person.

Given a choice, it is best not to desire something that does not exist.

Dr Rick

It can't. That's why ethics, which is not part of the physical world, cannot be studied scientifically.

Earthquakes and hot air are part of the physical world and can have physical effects, but right and wrong are not and cannot.

But they do have effects, just not effects on the natural world. Right and wrong can mitigate and cause suffering, pain, misery, happiness, and many other important things that profoundly impact our lives. They certainly are not meaningless nor fantasies.

The AntiChris

Alonzo Fyfe

I broadly agree with your criteria for assessing the morality of an act - but with the following italicised additions:
I can therefore state categorically that, in my subjective opinion, homosexuality is permissable!

Chris

Alonzo Fyfe

Dr. Rick.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. When I ask, "How can something not of the natural world have effects?" you answer, "It can't. That's why ethics, which is not part of the physical world, cannot be studied scientifically.

A short while later, you say, "Right and wrong can mitigate and cause suffering, pain, mery, happiness, and many other important things that profoundly impact our lives?" You deny, at the same time, that these are "effects in the natural world," but do you deny that pain is an effect in the natural world? That there is no physical reality supporting misery or happiness?

If right and wrong can cause these things, then they have effects in the natural world. Which means that they, too, must be in the natural world, and thus susceptable to scientific investigation.


The AntiChris:

You seek to replace my definition of wrong (a person with good desires would not perform the act), with a modified version (a person with good in my subjective opinion desires would not perform the act).

I offer this definition of 'good' as a best theory of what most people mean when they use the term. You are, of course, free to stipulate a different definition in your own private language. That will have no impact on what most other people are talking about when they use terms like 'wrong'.

The evidence for (or against) such a definition is whether it in fact makes sense of the way people use the term. Like any theory, it needs to adequately account for a set of relevant observations. In this case, the relevant observations are general verbal behavior associated with using the word 'wrong'.

This verbal behavior includes the fact that most users of the word 'wrong' hold that, "Even if, in my subjective opinion, homosexuality is wrong, I may be mistaken." This verbal behavior would be nonsensical under your proposed definition.

Thus, though the definition may be an accurate definition of 'wrong' in your own private language (AntiChriseese), it fails as an accurate definition of 'wrong' in English.

Bill Snedden

Short answer: No.

Longer answer:

I think that it would be rather difficult to construct a valid secular case against homosexuality. It is a perfectly natural behavior (seen in many different animals) and has no necessary harmful or deleterious effects to willing and consenting participants. Many humanistic moral theories are utilitarian or consequentialist in nature; I can't immediately think of any utilitarian or consequentialist rationales for finding it unethical.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Dr Rick

Happiness and suffering are not physical elements; they are subjective entities. Happiness is not a physical state or property. Their effects are felt in the physical world in which we live, but are you really suggesting that they are independent physical or natural entities?!

Physical reality can influence our happiness, but happiness cannot move a boulder.

If you mean that we can measure the effects of a "right" behavior against a "wrong behavior," sure, but that's not ethics. When your left with a measurement from such an evaluation, you still haven't come any closer to knowing "right" from "wrong" than you were before you started.

Maybe I could agree with you if you gave an example of what you mean by a "scientific ethical system." or a "scientific study of ethics."

Alonzo Fyfe

Dr. Rick.

Happiness and suffering are not physical elements...

This, I do not buy. They are brain states -- statements about what is going on in the material substance between the ears -- and just as physical as anything else in the universe.

Physical reality can influence our happiness, but happiness cannot move a boulder.

Neither can a paramecium (except in indirect and obtuse ways), but they still material entities.

Pain is associated with the stimulation of C-neurons. Pleasure with the release of endorphines.

A desire is a brain state -- a description of the way that the brain is wired. It is a statement about how electrical impulses that begin at the sense organs travel down neurons and interact with other impulses, eventually leading to an impulse travelling down to a neuron to cause a muscle to contract as a component of a human action.

All of it physical.

And if ethics fits anywhere in that chain of physical phenomena, then it must also be a physical phenomena of some sort or another.

(If you want to get into souls and spiritual essences and counter-causal 'will' as a part of this, we will part company. These things do not exist either.)


If you mean that we can measure the effects of a "right" behavior against a "wrong behavior," sure, but that's not ethics.

Close, but how can we measure effects of "wrong behavior" unless "wrong behavior" is something that is capable of having effects to measure? You have to assume a physical entity capable of having effects, or you have nothing to measure.

You could be saying that you are measuring the effects of the behavior -- not its wrongness. Yet, if you are saying that a 'wrong behavior' can be, in every physical way, completely indistinguishable from a 'right behavior', then the whole practice of calling the behavior 'right' or 'wrong' is nonsensical. There must be some difference between them.


Maybe I could agree with you if you gave an example of what you mean by a "scientific ethical system." or a "scientific study of ethics."

Well, I can give you an account below of what I take moral terms to be referring to. However, whether I am right or wrong on that matter does not affect my point here.

Moral "good" must either require metaphysical dualism, a fantasy, or a physical entity.

I see no evidence to support the dualist option (so it has no relevance in real-world decision-making).

Fantasy entities have no relevance in real-world decision making.

Only physical entities (or the properties of physical entities, including emergent and dispositional properties) have any relevance in real-world decision making.

Moral properties are either a part of the real world, or irrelevant in the real world.


Now, I think that value terms, in general, describe how states of affairs stand in relationship to some set of desires or another. All of the entities involved in the description (the desire -- a physical state of the brain, the state of affairs -- a physical state of the world, the relationship -- a physical standing of one compared to the other, like location) are all real entities.

Different value terms (health, injury, harm, benefit, abuse, beauty, ugliness, usefulness, illness, dangerous) describe different types of relationships between different relevant states of affairs and different sets of desires.

"Harm", for example, is the thwarting of a strong desire (brain state) belonging to the person said to be harmed, while "hurt" is the thwarting of a weak desire (brain state) of the person said to be hurt. (Joel Feinberg, HARM TO OTHERS: THE MORAL LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL LAW, Oxford University Press, 1984)

Moral values, ultimately, describe the capacity of desires to fulfill or thwart other desires. Good desires fulfill other desires, bad desires thwart other desires. Right acts are those that a person with good desires would perform, wrong acts are those a person with good desires would avoid, and permissible acts are those that a person with good desires have no particular reason to do or avoid doing.

But I already said that (above).

See my postings Ethics Without God for a more detailed account.

dk

Dr Rick: A little deconstruction is in order, here:
dk: I don’t have any major disagreement with your dissection, except the term deconstruction.

dk: I guess it depends upon whether... We understand religion as the source, context or the objective of ethics.
Dr Rick: Religion is an attempt to represent and order beliefs and experiences; it can include ethics, but not all ethical systems have a relationship to religion.
dk: Ok, I agree. Except religion and philosophy can only succeed by a representative order that unifies faith and reason.

dk:Ethics is a science...
Dr Rick: Ethics involves systematizing, defending, and recommending the abstract concepts of right and wrong behavior; science is a specific set of methods for the study of natural phenomena.
dk: I don’t follow. Science is systematic, methodical and abstract. Math is the only exact science, and the basis of all the other sciences. Obviously the authority vested to the social sciences has been generally unreliable.

dk: ...that applies moral principles to different circumstances...
Dr Rick: Applied ethics involves examining specific issues and their circumstances, such as abortion and homosexuality, but the study of from where or how those ethics arise, known as metaethics is not circumstance specific.
dk: We seem to agree that ethics systemizes and formalizes morals. It’s my understanding the metaethics pertain specifically to normative (practical) ethics. I submit 1st principles of natural reason give rise to ethics. I suspect you disagree.
dk: Used later with examples.

dk: I mean faith to describe religion in the broadest most general metaphysical, material and psychological sense as an essential basis for moral action.
Dr Rick: That's true only if you believe that all ethical behavior arises from religious faith.
dk: I agree, the available choice arising from metaethics and metaphysics. Both struggle with judgments about the indiscernible nature of aesthetics.

dk: For example a hedonist (1. above) would certainly understand sexual desire as a basis (source) for a moral dictum, a Christian (2. above) would understand sex within the context of higher moral dictums and a evolutionist (3. above) would see sex as a mechanism of change.
Dr Rick: Many Christians are also "evolutionists," and some evolutionists are hedonists.
dk: I agree, there’s an undeniable tension but not an essential conflict.

yguy

An assertion with no basis in fact.

No, the decision to call homosexuality normal was made by human beings, who also decided that those of us who haven't yet bought into the fantasy that homosexuality is aberrant must be re-educated or silenced.