Origin of Morality.
Created on: October 5th, 2006
This is just my crappy attempt to quell the insanity between the theists and atheists on YTMND. DO NOT UP VOTE IT, it is not a real YTMND, just a reply.
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Also, whetstone is still a child who pretends to have an objective and informed viewpoint but quite obviously merely spits propoganda and dishonest rhetoric and uses the techniques he has been brought up in to exploit the weak mindedness and trust of other people. Doesn't sound very moral to me. Sounds more like rational self interest, and the bad kind at that (opportunism).
"Confusing part when you mention in the middle that morality is what is best for all and best for the individual, which obviously clash (opportunism)."
Not necessarily, it happens to follow if you treat each and every person as a moral equal, insomuch that each person has the moral right to exist. Then that means you can do all you want to live well, but you can't do it on the money, power, or time of others. That means freedom, but without handouts, which is harsh, but it's better than giving in.
I'm a nihilist and a sociology major, although I do believe morality is socially constructed, you have no way of proveing that it started with rational self interest, although it may have served a rational function you have no way of knowing if that is the way people thought about it or it was simply right /wrong.
Well 2 problems: 1.) It doesn't seem feasible to act in a way to completely avoid disadvantaging any other human at any time without completely avoiding other people, and that doesn't seem to be the best way to run a society. I mean, to not use the time of others seems like an antisocial concept... Some people will define good as something that contributes positively to aggregate human happiness... which is more feasible but has some serious drawbacks...
2.) Some things are better for all if you rely on other people's time, money, and power. Public goods work in this fashion... without other people's time and money public goods will be underprovided which will negatively affect the aggregate human happiness, but in order to increase the aggregate human happiness you must rely on other people's time and money (and they may not necessarily gain at all from certain public goods that they pay for). It's a complicated subject...
Not completely true because happiness itself is the best thing to have. Druggies are happy, but druggies get messed up by the drugs. Fat people, like me, are happy when we get food, but the gorging kills us slowly. So, happiness is not the measure here, the measure is whether you are able to sustain your life or not, which self-interest drives that back to you as an emotional urge to survive. But survival itself is not possible without rational cooperation, like public goods (roads, laws, police, firemen).
Then that means only certain freedoms are guaranteed if they are negative freedoms, freedoms of being left alone. Like being able to get piss drunk on your own property, but not being able to drive drunk on the road. Or being able to have a nudist colony on your land, but not being able to push your nudism on everyone else in public square. This means freedom can only be possible in private domains, in that these domains are rightfully yours and the others are not.
Well happiness is typically the "self interest" that people have. Survival instinct and rational self interest are not typically equated as the latter has relations to preference whereas the first is merely survive/not survive, do you agree? If so, then there must be some sort of basis established to account for the reason someone would choose something over another thing or prefer something as good rather than bad even though neither option would affect their survival...
If it doesn't effect their survival, then it's really not a moral choice. Like the choice over what ice cream I'll eat for desert doesn't truly effect my existence like choosing to run over some kids with my Seville. In that vein, many things are taken out of the domain of morality completely like homosexuality, religious beliefs, stance on scientific paradigms, favorite sports team, and so on. And that's good because then morality is simplified to core decisions that affect individual's existences rather
than having these 'holy wars' over silly stuff like who's god is the best god and should women be allowed to minister. This completely frees the debate within morality of so much fluff. Essentially, morality driven by one's purpose to live, and live well [Virtue Ethics], gives an average 'meter' to judge whether a moral choice was good or not.
Well if you are simply making morality a survivalist decision then it makes mass murder not evil. I mean, you're not borrowing time, money, or power from any of those people. They don't even have any of that anymore because they're all dead. Seems perfectly moral to me in this system. Not a good feature.
That doesn't follow because you're assuming all agents in the moral proposition are not equal. They are by default since they too can kill you, harm you, and etc. Even in cases where there are physically weaker or impaired agents, their moral status is still equal by the fact they are rational beings. Killing another rational being is not moral since it implies that only some rational beings are equal. The only case here that causes problems are the borderline ones like the severely retarded or
those people that are in comas. But even then, the fact that we recognize they are people means that the status of moral equality comes also from the status of what a person entails. A person isn't just a big brain full of ideas, it can be that severely retarded person since s/he can think, just not at the same rate as you. Or the person in a coma, if s/he weren't so s/he would be able to think and act like you in the moral proposition.
Furthermore, the self-interest part only 'drives' you to consider the possibility of morality. Morality makes itself evident in how well you live due its function. Sorta like how buildings get better in design and are proven so by their resultant function. Morality follows the same form. That also means morality changes with time, adding new stipulations that follow from the evidence instead of just how you feel about things. This divorces emotional arguments from moral ones.
Rational self-interest and treating everyone as moral equals do not go hand in hand. It is not in their rational self interest to treat everyone as a moral equal because it is in their rational self interest to take from other people if they don't have enough to survive. It would be completely contradictary at times. It would come down to self interest or recognizing another person as a moral equal. Rational self interest, in such a bare bones survivalist manner, would yield to survival.
That doesn't follow if you accept reason as the means to measure out what is good and what is evil. You seem to fail to grasp that. What it entails is that each person has to choose to accept what is and what is possible as different things, but that if what is possible is better than what is, the person is open to choose that. Remember, each step depends on casaulity here.
When you say they don't go hand in hand, you are only right if you are excluding the possible from the choices given. If it is possible to have a better life that is sustainable beyond the 'state of nature' then it is rational to choose to act to make it happen rather than just working on bare survival. Bare survival is a momentary state, which nothing good happens since it is just that, momentary. And that puts the state of existence at its lowest level.
A better way to consider this point is to look at it as an economic simulation. You start at a minimal level of money/capital/whatever. Each choice you make to increase that money depends on what you have chosen. Now, say you chose to steal from the other players. Sure you got their money and they have none, but there's no more money to gain. That's bare survival. Now, say you choose to invest your money, with various rates of return. Each time you invest you get money, but not as much as you would if you
have stolen at the start of the game. But, you can notice that because there's always some rate of return on an investment versus only one rate of return from theft, that investing is more valuable and better off than stealing. Then, compare that to other moral issues like murder. Murder isn't good because it exposes yourself to harm. It also implies you see no value in life, but rather value in death. If you recognize that life is all that matters to a person, then any yield to death is defaulting that
valuation and thus rejecting your own life in kind. It's really strange to take that angle, but follows if you acknowledge that we are talking about rational agents. This proposition can't work with irrational agents, in that such agents do not consider any proposition at all, thus are unable to be reached by them. To the irrational agent, morality is a contrivence to be avoided if at all possible. But, irrational agents are given two choices; obey or be expelled from society.
Being expelled from society doesn't sound too awful, but if you consider how much of modern life requires individuals to work with others you'll see expulsion of this sort means certain death. No medical aide, no food, no shelter, no social interaction, no economic gain. You live on the fringes, barely surviving.
That's why self-interest, rational sort, and morality go hand in hand. The rational self-interested agent is always going to choose the best because s/he knows by experience that the moral principles work out to be the best in all cases. S/he also knows the alternative is not flourishment, but rather anemic survival on the fringes with death as your own guest. Now, none of this is guaranteed, but it's more likely to occur since a rational agent is able to be consistent, and consistency in this view is an
course you had to bring ayn rand into it. the funny thing to note is that i am a Christian. I tend to upvote the athiest ytmnds more than the religious, as the athiest ones tend to have better arguments. stuff like this ytmnd here is totally compatible with my world view, in that it simply explains another facet of reality that can exist in addition to, or independant of religion. unfortunately, theres a load of f*cksticks on here that like to give religion a bad name.
I think the problem is that most people that claim to be 'Christian' are really just pop-culture Christians. I haven't met many that can beat me in biblical verse quotage. I blame the ministers, they're more into filling pews than getting the message across. If people knew what Jesus believed, they would run away. Humility, giving up material wealth, and individualism are not ideas easily accepted.
You use the perfect solution fallacy. If a single philosophy fit perfectly into every scenerio we wouldn't need a debate, everyone could just follow that code. The fact of the matter is that morality does not concern itself with matters of science and religion, but on how to treat your fellow man. That is like arguing agaisnt evolution because it can't explain how the universe began. The origin of morality is in the court of sociology, not philosophy. -1 for slides being to fast to take everything in
◄It went by really fast and I could just save it and read it in imageready but I got like 9 million things to do so I'll comment on what I feel the thesis of your argument is: that morality is based on what is best for everyone. The primary problem here is that if you believe in evolution, you must also believe that death for the weak and feeble is best for everyone due to their weakening the gene pool. Are you a creationist then? Because if your foundation is natural evolution...►
◄...you have created a rather large problem for your theory. Also the theodicy (problem of evil) does not somehow disprove a standard of morality- but actually shows how there is a contrast between good and evil. There's only so much one can say in a YTMND comment but there are my thoughts. +3 for presentation.►
Motu: Actually, Sociology would have little to say about morality because it's primary mode is a science to observe and predict. Whetstone: Evolution does not deal with morality because it's a material issue rather than a conceptual one. And I also predicated the good being for all and the individual with emphasis on the individual.
There was a line near the end something like "atheists need no morality, or at least that's what theists think". That is, indeed, just what the theists think. From the religious confusion of atheism and nihilism is very prevalent, but the assertion is utterly unfounded. I can't speak for all athiests, but I'm far from a nihilist. Bizarre, draconian laws handed down from on high are not the only basis for morality, indeed, the laws themselves are often immoral.
Because I reject fairy tales, I am free to embrace a moral system that values people above all else. In my book, living, breathing, thinking beings take priority over celestial phantoms any day. Philosophically, my only axiom is that all conscious entities posess intrinsic moral value, and I work form there. Popular morality may be based on evolutionary processes or self-interest; I prefer to base mine on ratinal thought. I'm weird like that.
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