Alonzo Fyfe

My most recent addition to my Ethics Without God series was meant to be a defense of utilitarianism.

It turned out instead to be an attack on theories that rely on "feelings" and "intuitions" as a basis for moral judgment.

It also includes a criticism of views that treat morality as an evolved characteristic.

For any who are interested, you can find my arguments in the Part VII post of the following:

Ethics Without God

DRFseven

Alonzo Fyfe, I don't see where you have even attempted to refute the emotional basis of morality; instead, essentially, you have said you want it not to be so. As someone here once said, "And I want a pony."

That morality relies on emotion in no way negates the fact that as we mature we employ reason to modify our basic childhood attitudes on specific rights and wrongs. We relegate behaviors by experiential extrapolation to categories begun in early childhood that already have a firm emotional connection. Thus, how we report income for taxes is deconstructed in light of our total experiences and an attitude on whether certain ways of reporting constitute "cheating" or not is formed, either with the prorated, attached emotional configuration for the category labeled "cheating", or without. Same with issues such as abortion, war, political affiliation, welfare, etc., by considering them for categories such as murder, "loving thy neighbor", and so forth. Ultimately, everything comes down to right or wrong, yea or nay, according to internal schematics, in a kind of shorthand. In this economical way, we don't have to stop and mentally go all the way through all the ramifications of some contemplated behavior, we just go straight to "No!" or "Yes!".

Alonzo Fyfe

I made no attempt to refute the emotional basis of morality.

Even in my introduction I mentioned certain problems with a morality that does not take "emotions" seriously. The question is then not whether morality should be founded on emotions (or, actually, desires) -- but what that relationship is.

I "fired some shots against" (note, I did not use the term "refute") cetain popular accounts for drawing a relationship between morality and emotion -- such as intuitionism and theories that talk about an evolution of morality.

DRFseven

The relationship is one of necessity. It is the emotional weight that motivates an opinion, otherwise we have no way to prefer one way or another. Just perceiving facts gives no means of choosing; we are driven by the emotional investment attached to making a particular choice; i.e., desire.

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I "fired some shots against" (note, I did not use the term "refute") cetain popular accounts for drawing a relationship between morality and emotion -- such as intuitionism and theories that talk about an evolution of morality.

So you're saying our system of morality did not evolve? All animals have the same moral system that we have? Or are you saying that we had no moral system until X number of years ago, at which point, if we were speaking by then, we sat down and said, "We've really got to do something about our behavior before it's too late."?

Alonzo Fyfe

This is entirely correct. There is a necessary link between morality and desire, between desire and choice and, from there, to action.

However, at the same time, it is simplistic in that it looks only at that aspect of desire which makes the choice between different moral systems no different than the choice between different pizza toppings.

It ignores certain facts ABOUT desires and their relationship to choice, and those certain facts are the facts I hope to later show that are relevant to making moral choice different from the choice over pizza toppings.

I have not done this yet.


Really? This is what I am seeing? I had no idea . . .

Our desires have been influenced by evolution -- including our desires for certain types of food, for sex, for warmth, and the like.

What I am arguing against in the implication that says, "There is an evolutionary explanation for my desire to do X, therefore X is the height of virtue."

If one accepts this argument, then we should be prepared to discover that rape, racism (kin selection), and teenage male violence are all elements of the height of virtue.

But, if you read the essay, you would already know that this is my argument.

DRFseven

You're simply ignoring that I've already addressed that issue. I told you that my perception (and many others' perception) is that flavor choices of ice-cream have neither negative nor positive implications concerning our future. Other choices, such as whether to steal, rape, feed the hungry, etc., ARE perceived to impact our future in negative or positive ways (we perceive the impact to be negative or positive according to personal experience).



I have, twice.







Did you notice the punctuation? Question marks indicate I am asking if this is what you mean.

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What I am arguing against in the implication that says, "There is an evolutionary explanation for my desire to do X, therefore X is the height of virtue."

Who says that? I'm saying that this is what occurs regardless of how "virtuous" anyone thinks it is. People do what they feel is appropriate, according to conclusions they have come to throughout their lives. No matter HOW they came by those opinions, whether they think a god handed them down on a platter or they think it will make them happy or they think the planet will be "better off"; all of this reflects that people have evolved a type of social behavior whereby information from the environment is taken in and reflected in the resulting behavior. Neither the environment, the social group, nor the individual is static; everything is constantly evolving.

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But, if you read the essay, you would already know that this is my argument.

I read it.

Alonzo Fyfe

So?

Isn't this preference for "positive implications concerning our future" just another flavor of moral ice cream?


Again, I will agree fully that the actions that a person performs, and the choices that a person makes, depends on an interaction of the motivationally-impotent beliefs that the agent has and the motivationally-potent desires.

Indeed, in Part VIII of my series, I will be offering the first steps in a defense of this particular view. And I will be expanding on it and offering more detail later.

Yet, stopping here is unjustified. This account fails to distinguish between choices over pizza toppings and moral choices.

Now, you want explain this distinction by introducing this criterion of "positive implications concerning our future." But what justifies the introduction of this additional criterion? Without further comment, picking this criterion out of a hat is still no different than picking one pizza topping over another.

In general, I agree with the direction that you are going. Where we differ will largely hinge upon questions of justifying and explaining this concept of "positive implications concerning our future." I am going to offer a very precise definition to "positive implications concerning our future." Which means, the only point of disagreement between us is that, by the time I get done, "positive implications concerning our future" will not be this vague, uncertain, ambiguous concept.

DRFseven

No; the difference is that we feel that some behaviors are right or wrong (in the sense of good or bad), while other behaviors, such as food preferences, are not subject to being categorized as right or wrong.

How we CAME to feel that way about different behaviors is that we internalized some very emotional attitudes from our parents, et al, about some things and not about others because of the way they were, and continue to be, presented.

When we examine our opinions later after having matured, and ask ourselves, "Why DO I think that such-and-such is immoral?", we come up with answers such as "Because people engaging in such-and-such will lead to negative future consequences." Ok, so why ought we to want to avoid future negative consequences? We don't have a purpose for that desire; we have only the desire, itself, smirking and waving at us. All we can do is acknowledge that we do have this desire, and by seeking to serve that desire, we can "objectify", as best we can, the means to do so. All the while, the desire, itself, is the subjective and "arbitrary" end served by these behaviors.

So, food preferences are not moral preferences because we don't feel they are good or bad, right or wrong. Other behavioral preferences DO seem good or bad, right or wrong. See the difference?

It's only one I chose at random because it's so common. It could have been anything; "attainment of happiness" is another popular one; "glorifying God", "survival of the planet", any of those are reasons people use for explaining why they follow moral principles. They don't use these explanations for taste preferences because taste is not considered to be a moral issue.

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Without further comment, picking this criterion out of a hat is still no different than picking one pizza topping over another.

Yes it is different, because people consider that they are moral for reasons of survival, happiness, salvation, etc. They don't consider personal taste preferences relevant to these ends.