kingjames1

I agree with your last comments above: I am not making a social evaluation but rather a philosophical one. Indeed, atheists can be moral (so can those blasted agnostics -- and even crazy Muslim terrorists, for that matter.) Your own justification for why you behave 'ethically' is not in my opinion adequate for a social ethic.

One, it has no bearing on 'secret sins' - those sins or immoral acts that have a good chance of never being exposed by your fellow man/woman. E.g. hatred in your heart for someone that you cleverly disguise, or lusting after someone else's wife/husband, jealousy, greed, etc. All these 'sins' can be pretty well hidden. But perhaps you do not consider these to be immoral...

Two, your reason for behaving morally is not binding or authoritative, that is, there is no 'ought' in your justification. It is merely expedient for you. Your position might in fact be quite pragmatic in a democracy, but what if you were a monarch or a tyrant (e.g. Stalin) - then as one in unique authority and under special protection, your immoral actions would not likely see reciprocation. Being 'moral' then, that is, to behave according to the rules of social contract, may not be the most expedient behavior to advance your agendas. Rex Lex!

I'm glad that you decide to 'behave' - but, on what basis can you (if any) insist that others around you 'ought' to behave? The answer of the fascists: by the power of the state (a loaded gun)! But surely this is no adequate basis for ethics.

Perhaps most telling of your justification, it is a minimialist ethic: it is socially expedient to be 'good enough'. If I merely want to avoid be mistreated by others, I do not need to be proactive in ethics as much as reactive. Seeking justice for the poor and oppressed, feeding the faceless hungry, going to foreign countries to help relieve some of their socio-economic pressures, etc. -- all this 'extra' and 'heroic' good deeds are, in your justification, unnecessary and hence not necessarily to be pursued. In short, your ethics is anemic. Where is the conviction? Where the pressing call to lift up the downtrodden, to feed and house the poor, to give one's life in service of others? Where is geniune love for your fellow man/woman hashed out and lived? Where is such noble love rooted? Or must we reject such lofty moral heights as Puritanical baggage, or whatever it is we dismiss?

J.

Plump-DJ

Well i don't want to go and get all rational here but i do believe that is not a logical statement. You'd have to be God to know there was no God. That is exist in all places at all times.

But you were probably just being humouros right?

kingjames1

If, as you granted in a previous post, human ethics existed merely as a social construct - merely in the minds of men and women and the social practices of a culture - surely you see that this is hardly an objective basis or reality for the ethics in question. Would the hypothetical universal belief in the existence of unicorns make such a 'fact' objective?

Jeff, on what philosophical basis do you claim to know that there is even 'objective facts' in the first place? Are you a foundationalist? You seem to hold to a correspondence theory of truth. If so, how do you respond to the dramatic attacks against foundationalism and correspondence made in recent decades by the so-called 'postmodernists'?

Secondly, I have read Martin, but I do not want to assume that you hold his positions. I find his arguments lacking - and w/respect to the recent critiques of modern moral philosophy, his approach seems quite naive. More sophisticated attempts are made by Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty, or so it seems to me.

What is your take on this: even if we were to suppose that there were an 'objective reality', how can we know that we know it truthfully?

J.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: kingjames1 ]</p>

Psycho Economist

You're right. I hope I didn't imply that it was.

We all create abstract notions of what's right and what's wrong... but they're stereotypes based on whatever is the most salient example of "insert moral dilemma" we have at our disposal. Of all those individual moral compasses, we have a high degree of overlap: we all agree that murder is wrong. But it's still an abstraction.

Case in point: Machiavellianism. We all pay lip service to the notion that "lying and cheating are bad"; it's a social norm; it's an ethical consensus. But there are people who don't have any compunction about lying or cheating to get ahead in the world... but they don't think they're being immoral by lying or cheating because they're not breaking "the Golden Rule"... they expect others to try and take advantage of themselves, and so they're always on the lookout for being backstabbed. The only thing us low-Mach's can do is say, "I won't do that; and I'll make your life hell if you do that to me or someone i care about."

Maybe you'll think i've taken too many psycholgy classes... but I don't. If you've got one of those things going on, eventually it'll creep out, it'll manifest itself as behavior of some sort, and it will hurt someone else... and that's where I draw the line. Behaviors have a capacity to uplift or to hurt, and behaviors follow from attitudes and thoughts...

Yep.

I hold to my own moral compass to uphold the social norms that protect me from being the victim of what I would consider wrong. If by expedient, you mean that I don't easily lie, cheat, or steal because I'm not a good liar, cheater, or stealer and would get caught... you're right. If you mean that nothing prevents me from lying, cheating, or stealing... I refer you to the first sentence of the paragraph. I'm pretty low in machiavellianism, especially for a guy.

I would argue that I'm not manipulative enough to weasle my way into such a position. However, I fully acknoweldge that I couldn't enforce my moral sensiblities on someone who is de facto above the law... law being a manifestation of that abstract moral consensus we share.

The social contract, as it happens, was established by force... On the other hand, the social contract represents our ceeding our right to do violence for our own ends to a central authority empowered to ensure that no one uses violence for personal ends. (The system often breaks down... but when it does, we can reclaim our right to do violence.)

That said, we all ought to uphold the social contract, because the more people there are who defy the social contract, the more we have to do to protect ourselves... breaking the contract down further. The breakdown of the social contract represents lost surplus that we could put to having a higher quality of life.

Yep.

To me, morality and compassion are on two seprate dimensions... you could be John D. Rockefeller... cheating and exploting your way to the top, only to give it all away to charity. Working to uplift others isn't necessary to being a moral person; but it is an indicator of being a compassionate person. Sure the two are correlated, but they're not one in the same.

And what would you recommend as a philisophical iron supplement?

In my conscience. And in the consciences of others, and may I ever be vigilant in that respect.

In another chapter altogether.

I don't dismiss them; I just don't see a moral imperative to take them up. There's a world of difference between not being a bad person, and being a good person. Morality to me is about not being a bad person.

If this sounds like a naieve mish-mash of Hobbes, Mill, Marcus Aurelius, Kant, Confucius, Antitrust theory, and ethical subjectivism, it's because that's how i think; those are my influences. I'm not a philosopher by trade... I'm a trekkie, a social scientist, a humanist, and an athiest... probably in that order.

Have fun.

(Whoops, some of that stuff wasn't properly inside / outside quote blocks...)

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>

jlowder

LOL, this has already been answered:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/ipnegep.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/ipnegep.html</a>

Jeffery Jay Lowder

jlowder

I see at least two errors in the paragraph quoted above. The first error is that you have misdefined naturalism, by confusing it with materialism. Naturalism is NOT the view that "the natural universe is all there is and all there ever will be." Agnostic philosopher Paul Draper explains naturalism by contrasting it with theism as follows:

Note that Draper's carefully nuanced definition of naturalism is perfectly compatible with non-natural objects (i.e., abstract objects).

The second error is that you assume without argument that if a metaphysical naturalist is a moral realist, they must also be an ethical nonnaturalist and subscribe to G.E. Moore's intuitionism. (I had mentioned Moore's position merely to demonstrate the logical compatibility of intuitionist moral realism with naturalism/atheism. I do not myself hold to intuitionism.) What you are completely neglecting here is ethical naturalism. To write, "The arguments against atheist, naturalistic ethical realism are hackneyed and do not require rehash," is question-begging. I, for one, believe that your arguments against ethical naturalism do require a "rehash." So please rehash them.

You also wrote:

I am not familiar with the "perspectival" approach to the DCT. I assume it is to be contrasted with "voluntaristic" approaches, but I do not know what you mean by the "perspectival" approach to the DCT. Surely you could at least summarize it here? Is "perspectival" a name for the approach that God only wills what is in accordance with his eternal and unchanging nature?

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: jlowder ]</p>

kctan

Quotes by KJ1

Who are you to say that such actions are 'secret sins' or even immoral acts. Have these thoughts been carried out ? How can something be immoral when they are not carried out ? Is thinking of helping someone a moral act ? Is thinking of giving everything you own to the poor a moral act ? Or perhaps you do not consider these to be moral ? Love for your wife in your heart, a generous spirit that's not displayed are they not just as undiscernable ? Are god given morality able to cover them adequately ?


We are talking about 'what if' here. What if you don't want to be a tyrant or monarch ? You wish your people to live in peace & harmony ? Your moral actions will most likely expedite whatever agendas you wish to advance. Even if you wish to be a tyrant or monarch (with 'bad' intentions) your lack of a binding or authoritative moral will aid you even greater as YOU would be the one handing out whats 'right' & whats 'wrong'.

I too am glad that you decide to behave (for now) but on what basis can you insist that others around you 'ought' to behave as well & not justify their bad behaviours onto your holy words of god ? Again the answer of the fascists : by the power of the state (a loaded gun) ! But surely this is no adequate basis of ethics.

What else would be consider as adequate basis for ethics if not for the fear of retributions ? It would take countless generations of doctrination/teaching etc... to get the message across that being moralistic is by itself rewarding (not because there's a tasty carrot for you after you die).

Where in the world did this come from ? A person with the genuine heart to do such deeds will do it regardless of what s/he believes in. The justifications are simply because s/he enjoys doing it. The same cannot be said for yours which is nothing more than hipocripsy - afraid that you will not get the tasty carrot if you act otherwise.

Compulsion & acting out of pure good will is totally different & the results are different as well. A case study would be Mother Teresa who did 'great deeds' but upon closer scrutiny review that its worse than doing nothing.


Such 'noble love' is not rooted in the believe that morality is given by an imaginery sky daddy but more in the individual's personel conviction to do whatever it is that they feel right.

A person is in continual unbearable pain but unable to kill himself, he will eventually die in a few years time, a person helped him to be on his way before the pain eventually kills him. Is this moral or immoral ?

jlowder

I do not recall ever granting that human ethics exists merely as a social construct. I have never believed that. I think you may have misinterpreted something that I wrote.

Of course not. Again, I think you have misunderstood my remarks. Please quote my statement that you think indicates I believe morality is nothing more than a social construct.

I am undecided on my answers to these questions. My thesis, though, is that moral realism does NOT require theism. In my experience, theistic attempts to argue from moral realism to theism inevitably collapse into some other type of theistic argument. I won't argue for that conclusion here, but your first question struck me as another instance of that (e.g., "Okay, maybe there is no argument from moral realism specifically to theism, but I do have this other argument 'over here' that moves from objective facts--nonmoral or moral--to theism").

Yes, I do.

I don't take those attacks any more seriously than I take theistic attacks seriously. Look, these are interesting questions, but I think you are changing the subject here. The subject was whether moral realism requires, entails, or presupposes theism. I wrote:

You still have not refuted this point.

I'm not sure which positions of his you have in mind. I'm waiting for a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573929875/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">his new book on atheistic metaethics</a> so that I can evaluate his defense of the ideal observer theory. (At least, I assume that's what he defends in his book).

More assertions, but no arguments. Again, I'm not even sure which arguments of Martin's you're referring to.

My take is that that is an excellent question, one which I haven't yet focused on in my research. So far, my research has only focused on moral semantics and ontology. Moral epistemology is my next research topic. However, I have summarized physicalist John Post's approach <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000333" target="_blank">here</a>.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: jlowder ]

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: jlowder ]</p>

jlowder

On the assumption that metaphysical naturalism is true (and hence humans are the products of purely naturalistic evolution), it does not follow that objective moral facts are "the result of time + chance," just as it does not follow that the laws of logic are "the result of time + chance." All that follows from metaphysical naturalism is that our beliefs about morality have been influenced by our evolutionary origins. You have confused human beliefs about morality with morality itself.

This is a statement of your inability to recognize the compatibility of objective moral facts with atheism. (My previous sentence was not intended to be ad hominem.) This is not an argument. What exactly is your point in even mentioning the "survival of the fittest" or evolution? Perhaps your argument is something like this:

(1) If naturalism is true, then humans are the products of evolution.
(2) If humans are the products of evolution, then they have the same moral responsibility as any other product of evolution (i.e., any other animal).
(3) Other products of evolution (i.e., other animals) are engaged in a vicious struggle for suvival and will behave in whatever manner necessary to ensure their survival.
(4) Therefore, if naturalism is true, humans have no moral responsibilities.

The problem with this argument (and others like it) is that "survival of the fittest" does not rule out moral obligation. "Survival of the fittest" is completely irrelevant to determining the truth of moral realism.

Ruse's argument is fallacious. It is an example of the genetic fallacy. Ruse has provided an argument for believing why, on the assumption that evolution is true, we would expect humans to generally believe that morality is objective, even if morality was not objective. Ruse has NOT provided an argument, much less provided a successful argument, showing that evolution somehow "disproves" objective moral facts.

(snip the rest for later)

Jeffery Jay Lowder

Vorkosigan

What is your take on this: even if we were to suppose that there were an 'objective reality', how can we know that we know it truthfully?

First, what is the definition of a "true" picture of the environment? To my sense, a metal table is a solid object, to a physicist, it is a mass of moving particles, to an ant it is smooth and slippery, to a bacterium it is the universe. To a shark a metal table has an additional element of electromagnetic fields that the other animals can't perceive? Whose perception is the "true" one?

The question is empty because there's no "truth" out there. Each animal perceives the world "effectively" rather than truthfully, their experience of the world constructed in an interaction between what's out there and the built-in processing devices and construction programs in our head. Consider: why is a blue car purple under a flourescent street light? Because we have a device that "corrects" for sun angle to give "true color" at all times, but because flourescent light is different, it corrects "wrongly" and we see the "wrong" color.

I think it is pointless to ask about "true" representations of the world, since the definition of "truth" is a value. One should instead try to describe how organisms represent the world to themselves, effectively. Then one gets around the whole true/not true dichotomy, and undermines a key Christian philosophical argument, that god guarantees our senses reveal truth about the world.

Vorkosigan