Nowhere357

I do understand your position. My objection remains - without empathy, or moral sense, or some other emotional component, there is no reason for anyone to follow codified moral laws, regardless of how well formulated. Other than fear of punishment/desire of reward, of course.

I haven't read your series on ethics yet - give me time to do so, then maybe I can explain myself better. Until then, can we agree to disagree?

Nowhere357

True enough. The problem is, we have direct experience of moral awareness.

Do you believe that might makes right?

Nowhere357

Very interesting. I'll need time to digest your post.

Methods for controlling people are one thing. What about the pov of the person who strives for morality without undue outside influence? Can you see that reason and empathy are sufficient and necessary?

xorbie

Well after starting this thread, I sadly forgot about it (literally), but I am now all caught up.

Basically, here is my rebuttal to the whole thing with Occham's Razor and the brain's desires. By stating that much of morality is similiar to aesthetics, I am trying to describe in more detail our desires. It would NOT be more simple to say that we desire to do certain things and desire not to ahve certain things happen, it would be more general and vague, or at least that is how I see it.

IMO, many people see stealing and murdering as fundamentally different. This difference is not qualitative, but rahter quantitative. People can understand that stealing is wrong, but have no physical visceral, reaction to it. The reason people don't steal is usually that they are afraid to do it, or can logically see that it is "wrong" and have learned not to. However, people have visceral, gut reactions to certain actions.

Now, with regards to where these visceral actions come from, I think many of them are coded into our DNA and result from evolutionary forces. However, it is also part of nuture, and many people feel visceral reactions when they see a Nazi (especially if they are a Holocaust survivor).

Basically, my point is that the visceral reaction is not there to explain something desire cannot, it is there to explain why some desires or lack of desires come about, and why some are qualitatively and not just quantitatively different from others.

Theli

Why should someone cause someone else to have "good desires" is that person himself didn't have them? It must have started somewhere. Don't we feel "good desires" out of an inborn need for social bonds, something wich would be impossible without this desire.
I don't see how we can place a moral judgement on desires, when they are the base for our morality.

Alonzo Fyfe

A "good desire" is a desire that fulfills the desires of others, either directly or indirectly.

I have desires.

If I can get other people to acquire desires that fulfill the desires of others, either directly or indirectly, then my desires will be more easily fulfilled.

If I can get others to help teach people to acquire those desires that fulfill the desires of others, we will all be better off.

Of course, those 'others' want me to have desires that fulfill the desires of others directly or indirectly. So, we all get together to figure out how to get each other, and everybody else, to have those desires that fulfill the desires of others.

Ergo, the cultural practice of "morality" is invented.

A practice that includes debate over which desires are actually good and which are not, and which actions a person with desires would perform, and which they would not.

For example, killing tends to thwart desires. An aversion to killing is good, because it prevents the thwarting of those desires. Therefore, "Thou shalt have an aversion to killing."

But, wait. What about killing killers? A desire to kill killers might be a good thing. It will prevent the killers from killing again, and might deter others from killing.

But this gets confusing. If we kill killers, then don't we need to kill the killers of killers? Let's make this simpler. Let's say, instead of having an aversion to killing, people should have an aversion to murdering. Killing killers is not murdering, so an aversion to murdering does not imply an aversion to killing killers, because that is not murdering.

But which is actually better? Which better fulfills the desires of others directly or indirectly? Should we have an aversion to killing (no capital punishment), or an aversion to murdering combined with a desire to kill murderers?

Well, we might have to debate that question for a few thousand years.

(And what type of evidence would be relevant in that debate? Well, let's look at just about any debate on capital punishment, and one sees how easy it is to interpret this as a debate over what desires are good and bad, and what a person with good desires would do.)

Of course, somebody comes along and throws a monkey wrench into the whole rational debate. "There's this God, and if you offend this God you invite His wrath on all of us, and I know what this God wants and you do not so you all have to do what I say if you do not want to anger God. These people hyjack the concept of morality and insist that a desire to serve God (namely, God's spokesperson) is good, and an aversion to serving God (or, more precisely, God's spokesperson) is bad."

Even though they get a few things right: "Thou shalt have an aversion to murdering" and "Thou shalt have an aversion to bearing false witness against thy neighbor," they also add things like, "Thou shalt serve no God's spokesperson but me" . . . or, I'm sorry, it's "Thou shalt have no god before God.".

Religion, for all practical purposes, in an institution that has hyjacked the (secular) institution of morality in order to redirect it in a way that serves the interests of the priests.



In what sense are you saying that desires "are the basis for our morality"?

Alonzo Fyfe

To expand upon the points made above a little bit further.

Let us assume that people were involved in a debate over which desire set, if promulgated generally through society, would best fulfill desires both directly and indirectly. The options are:

(1) An aversion to killing.

(2) An aversion to murdering combined with a desire to kill murderers.

We would not be able to settle this debate by taking a vote. A majority who says that (A) tends toward more direct and indirect desire fulfillment than (B) could still be wrong. In fact, even if everybody prefers (A) over (B), they could be wrong.

Nor could we answer the question by looking at our own sentiments. Those sentiments tell us whether we HAVE an aversion to killing, or an aversion to murdering combined with a desire to kill murderers (or all three, or just a desire to kill murderers) but not whether such desires fulfills desires generally. It does not tell us whether these desires are GOOD, only whether or not they are PRESENT.

This is why 'subjectivist' theories of ethics are problematic at best, even though it's true that there are no objective values (that is, nothing has value independent of its ability to fulfill desires either directly or indirectly).

The types of evidence that would be relevant in answering this question are reflected in claims like:

(1) We know that a murderer is more likely to murder in the future (do we?) and if we kill the murderer we can prevent those future desire-thwartings. A point in favor of (2), maybe.

(2) Some murderers are NOT people who will kill again in the future. Killing them involves desire-thwartings that provide no benefit.

(3) If we have a desire to kill murderers, people will have less of a desire to become murderers, thus preventing even more desire-thwartings. A good thing.

(4) We can't always tell who is and who is not a murderer, so we run the risk of killing non-murderers; this desire-thwarting is a bad thing.

(5) Is being a murderer something that people really think about anyway? Maybe our desire to kill murderers will not prevent people from murdering.

(6) We can never keep our other likes and dislikes out of our actions, so our desire to kill murderers will manifest itself as a stronger desire to kill those types of murderers we dislike for other reasons and a weaker desire to kill those murderers we like. The institution for killing murderers is going to warp, to some degree, into (for example) an institution for killing poor black men.

(7) Some people might actually have a desire to see poor black men killed, but we have to evaluate THAT desire according to its tendency to thwart or fulfill other desires. It's fairly easy to see that such a desire is desire-thwarting, so we can ignore it. We shouldn't be fulfilling bad desires.

(8) Some people have a natural desire to kill murderers -- perhaps it's genetic. Killing murderers would fulfill this desire. But, we still need to ask if the desire to kill murderers is good or bad.

(9) Promoting a general aversion to killing may actually prevent more people from becoming murderers than an aversion to murdering and a desire to kill murderers -- because it is simpler, more easily taught, and least susceptible to error.

(10) God says we should have an aversion to murdering and a desire to kill murderers, and since the desire to serve God is, itself, a good desire, a desire to kill murderers fulfills the desire to serve God, and the desire to serve God is a good desire, making the desire to kill murderers also a good desire.

It is true that people will not likely use these exact words. But, I argue, it makes sense of the words they do use far better than any 'aestetic' theory does.