Where Does Morality Come From?

Yeah, I thought he was cool when I was a teenager, but his understanding of the human condition is pathetically shallow.

Of course it is, because no moral person would ever consent to being a despot, nor would a moral populace consent to be his vassals.

 

Ah, the ignorance that too often follows the shallowness of youth. So disappointing that you're proud of it.

Nonsense. A moral person might agree to exercise absolute authority in a crisis. A lifeboat full of survivors comes to mind. How do you know who is in control of the lifeboat? It's the guy with the gun.

 

no its not. its out of the necessity to live in peace, or coexist without fear of the other, and requires honor, (as in honoring a agreement), animals don't seek moral ground hence the concept of "its a jungle". without the honoring of agreements, man is no different then any other flesh. "every man for himself" is simply a concept of there are no alliances (pre-existing agreements to be honored) but that doesn't mean one can't come into an agreement with another in mutual benefit.

morals are not made of philosophical brain farts, they are simply what is agreed to by two or more persons in the relationship and dealing with one another.

 

Heinlein also thought it was OK to have sex with his twin daughters.

What's your point in quoting Heinlein?

 

Oh, you think everything Heinlein wrote about he personally believed? <sigh>

Some people just don't understand speculative fiction.

As for why I quoted Heinlein, he had a gift for rendering concepts down to their essence. I appreciate such genius.

 

Actually, you didn't quote Heinlein. You quoted a fictional character- Lazarus Long. The same fictional character that believed it was OK to have sex with his twin daughters.

In any case, your argument is like that of most religious people. Heinlein wrote a lot of things. You pick and choose some examples that agree with your views. You reject, with a <sigh> for emphasis, those that do not agree with your views. That's the same thing you do with your bible: pick and choose.

 

You tickle me.

First off, I'm an atheist.

Second: When I quote text that agrees with my thinking, it doesn't matter whether the author believed in that text.

 

Morality is a product of evolution and it's something all social animals possess necessarily.

One example:



(The male who initially helps the baby isn't even its parent.)

 

If you insist on having conversations with the voices in your head, do the rest of us a favor and keep it the hell off the board, TIA.

To be sure; but obviously it takes more than that to be a despot.

The problem being, societies are built and maintained to avoid lifeboat scenarios; so there is an obvious consideration that applies in non-exigent circumstances which lays bare the immorality of those who consent to live under despotism.

 

Sometimes the hunger for an intelligent response is overwhelming, so I talk to myself. Have pity and say something clever.

OK, so why not list the requirements for being a despot? You have your copy of Despots for Dummies handy, right?

Nonsense. Societies are built and maintained to deal with the status quo. Very few plan for crisis.

 

Pretty sure saying something you deem clever would make me look like a moron to intelligent people; so with all due respect, the request is denied.

Hardly necessary, seeing the only one that matters in the present context is the desire for power over others for its own sake.

The natural followup to such a pronouncement is to offer something contradictory...

...but of course this does no such thing, so the basis for said pronouncement remains a mystery.

 

What a clever response!

Then you need to make up your mind, because you're the one who insists there are other criteria besides exercising absolute authority:

yguy: To be sure; but obviously it takes more than that to be a despot.​

Yet another clever reply from you, I guess.

Oh my, your cleverness knows no limits!

My contradictory statement was: "Societies are built and maintained to deal with the status quo. Very few plan for crisis."

The meaning of that word jumble is a mystery (what does "this" mean in context?). Please rephrase

 

And I've given you one of them.

Presumably that contradicts something, but not anything I said.

Figure it out - or go fly a kite in a thunderstorm. Don't make me no difference.

 

Well, that was easy. I didn't even have to break a sweat.

Have a nice day.

 

Morality is a manifestation of human values. Human values are the result of our awareness of experience and our interaction in our environment. Morals only have a meaningful context in the presence of other that are capable of empathy.

There are a handful of things that most people can agree to when thinking about experience...

Most people would rather avoid:

Pain
Sickness
Unhappiness

And most people would rather experience:

Happiness
Well-being
Health

Having said that, I think it's important to remember that when thinking about ideas of positive and negative experiences, remember that if there is a center point between ultimate happiness and ultimate suffering the middle point isn't in the "middle" if you are thinking in terms of a visual scale. I say that because humans are much more likely to try to avoid negative experiences than they are to seek positive ones. That is, we are more likely to take drastic action to avoid pain, then we are to experience pleasure. Thus, simply being free from any sort of pain or suffering could in itself be thought of as an extremely positive experience much closer to the idea of an ultimate happiness and much farther from the other extreme, ultimate suffering.

As an example, we never see skydivers jump out of planes without parachutes because the joy of skydiving outweighs the fact they will be killed in the end, but you will see people fear things of little risk and potentially high reward.

How you achieve these states of can depend on your environment and your experience of it.

If you are healthy (mentally and physically) and you live in an environment of comfort and relative abundance, how you accomplish these desired states might be different than if you are sick (mentally or physically) and/ or if you live in a harsh environment of relative scarcity.

Thus, we need to remember that the context of our experience matters as we put more or less emphasis on the things that are valued.

But what if a person experiences pleasure in the brain while causing their body harm? Then one can say that person is subjectively experiencing pleasure while objectively causing themselves harm.

Moving on.....

Do we value life because we are told it is immoral to murder or do we realize the value of life as we experience it and as a result rationalize the belief that life has value based on our experience of murder and realize that it goes against our values and is therefore immoral?

I'd simply ask, do you need to be told that murder is immoral in order to realize that it's wrong? If you believe that morals are given to you by a higher authority, do you think that you could ever be told that murder is moral and you would really believe that it's ok?

I'd suggest that we experience our world and derive our morality from that experience.

Thus, our values are subjectively based on our experience and our perception and of the experiences of others (empathy), but once we've realized those values there are objective ways to achieve them and there are objective ways to fail to achieve them. If you subjectively value private property and recognize the benefits that go with it, then stealing is objectively immoral with respect to the value of private property.

In conversations I've had in the past I've been told that my values are arbitrary, and I could easily choose to value different things, like murder and rape and I'd be equally justified. I admit that values are a choice, but so is the choice to believe in a supreme being who decides what is moral and what isn't. If what you believe is a choice, why not believe things that have an evidentiary foundation.

Do you think the greatest possible suffering is bad? Do you think the greatest possible happiness is good? Do you think that other people hold those values? If you chose to deny others the pursuit of happiness or cause others suffering, can you see how that might put your own desires to achieve happiness and avoid suffering at risk?

If the answer to those questions is yes to those questions, you've made a choice. Now there are objective ways to succeed and there are objective ways to fail in the pursuit of those choices.

Now....If you can't say that the worst possible suffering is bad then I really don't know what you are talking about and the word bad is meaningless in any context.

Are morals purely subjective? Are the arbitrary?

Think about it like the rules of a game. Take the game of basketball. The decision to make the hoop 10ft off the floor is subjective, but it's not arbitrary. Basketball would not be the popular sport it is today if the hoop was 5ft off the floor, or 50ft off the floor. The height of the basket is relative to the human body and our physical capabilities, so while the hoop could have been 9'10" or 10'2" and it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference, no one can say the rules are arbitrary based solely on capriciousness, they are based on experience and are interactions with our environment.

Once the rules of the game have been subjectively determined, within the context of those rules (values) there are objectively right and objectively wrong ways to proceed (morals). Values are the decisions we make based on the practical outcomes we'd like to experience, morality is the framework we build based on those values and that helps us determine if an action is right or wrong as not all actions are easy to determine.

Take for example the question used to show the weakness of utilitarianism....

Is it ok to kill a healthy person and take their organs to save 5 sick people?

Or, if a doctor rapes a patient while they are asleep if they are unaware, how can that be immoral?

With respect to the first question, as I said before, pain and suffering count for more than happiness, thus there should be no justification for killing one person to save 5 others. But there are lots of ways to play this out that require careful contemplation and moral calculus. What if one of the 5 people is on the cusp of curing cancer, but that person needs a liver today?

To the second question, the goal of any moral system should not only be to prevent harm but potential harm. If the doctor is mentally healthy, then his violation of another person's body is harmful to himself. Before the doctor commits the act, s/he cannot be sure the patient won't wake up, nor can they be sure that the act won't cause longer term harm. Lastly, we are empathetic creatures. This is why humans can contemplate morality, we understand the consequences of our actions outside the moment and most rapists do believe that rape is wrong as they would not themselves wish to be raped or want those they care about to experience it.

In the context of human experience, we are still learning about our own capacity to experiences happiness and suffering and as a result, we modify our "rules" in light of new understanding and evidence.

Values are the foundation of how we determine the framwork, the "rulebook" that is our morality.

Having said that, there is no objective morality, even those that might point to a god as the objective basis for morality need to remember that if god is an entity and it decides what is "good" and what is "bad", then god is the subject in the subject/ object relationship. By definition, gods choices are subjective as (most people) believe that god could choose to make the act of murder moral. If god isn't the arbiter of what is right, then what role does a god play and how is it an improvement over what I've defined?

I want to finish by saying, I'm not attacking god or religion. Frankly, I believe that without the idea of god and religion humans, IMO, would have had a much more difficult time trying to create a context for their values. Socially we might still be centuries behind where we are today without the idea of god or religion. However, I think we've entered another age where understanding can lead us to different choices on the basis of our morality. With that I find that my morality is completely consistent with the average Christian with few exceptions, thus I don't see my relationship with Christianity as an adversarial one, but rather an evolution of a moral system based on a belief in god to one based on our understanding of experience and the things that we choose to value.

Hope that helps, questions are welcome.

 

Simply put its the evolutionary development of the species as empathic and social animals in a growing and demanding complex society its codified ethics in our modern times usually those agreements we have under international human rights treaties and national laws this can be influenced by religion and has in some cases a lot and some not as much. For example the laws in Saudi Arabia are not the same as in say France or in Japan or in the United States.

 

Sure they are, relative to Himself - which of course isn't a problem because of Who He is.

Dunno where you get that idea, but it's idiotic no matter how many believe it. You might as well say an apple tree could choose to bear cockroaches. God couldn't do anything remotely like that because it's not in Him to be the author of confusion.

Since He is, the question doesn't matter.

 

Morality is the conduct that best serves the individual's survival and prosperity.
This is separate from ethics which is the collective moral standards of a community.
What best serves most individuals is to serve the community.

 

Actually not true. Many species have rules governing behavior. Pecking orders. Ostracizing different individuals, accepted behaviors towards infants, mating rituals, etc etc. Man is clearly more advanced but not all that unique. Anyone who actually believes morals come from god has to be totally ignorant of animal behaviors.

Rules of behavior has evolved in the animal kingdom to facilitate group survival and we are basically no different. OH, and hostility toward others outside the group is another animal behavior that exists in man.

 

Are you really interested in debating the subject of morality from the (I assume) Christain point-of-view?

If so, I'd be happy to discuss. It might make an interesting conversation for this thread, or was that what I call, A drive-by comment? You comment but have no real desire to discuss and defend your point-of-view.

You up for it? If so, I have a few questions.

 

I was only commenting relative to god, assuming one believed in him. I would love to debate morality.

 

Cool.....You'll be taking the Christian point-of-view I assume?

I want to say before I get started that my point-of-view isn't "anti-god" or "anti-Christian" and I hope that no one looks at it that way. I'm just having a conversation about morality and how we determine the difference between right and wrong.

So I'll start with a few simple questions.

What do we mean when we call something right or wrong? What are we saying about a particular action that makes it right or wrong? If stealing is wrong, what is it about stealing that makes it......wrong?

 

I would like to take my own position on morality.
Morality and therefor all notions of right or wrong ultimately come from an extension of the individuals desire to survive, obviously many things that people call moral are nonsensical notions such as the idea that women are meant to serve men or that homosexuality can be prayed away.I maintain that morality is purely subjective and that Humankind is the only demonstrable moral agent

here are in my veiw two basic forms of morality that both stem from the same survival instinct

1. actions taken by an individual to survive, this often touches upon ethics as getting along with the community is paramount to one's social standing.
   
   
2. The second is how to operate in a post necessity circumstance.
   

 

All social mammals display 'morals and ethics'. Anyone who disputes this needs to spend some time observing wolf behaviour (youtube is a great resource for this).

 

I thought you had read this a few posts back..

Read this and tell me what you think.

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...ality-come-from.503140/page-7#post-1067660249