[PartTimeLurker]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I'm going to go into more detail in this below but wanted to give you a quick introductory answer here. I'm not saying that nobody experiences this compulsion. I'm not saying that Jerry doesn't experience this compulsion. I'm saying that on Jerry's view there's no compulsion for that compulsion -- or, more lightly, that the existence of that compulsion seems to be entirely arbitrary, an odd fact of fate.

Why the need to explain the compulsion away, though? Why can't it be arbitrary - just the way things turned out? Isn't that like asking why humans are perfectly suited to living on land rather than ocean - because humans wouldn't have been land-dwellers if we weren't. Or why humans have sexual urges - because it's how we procreate, and if we procreated in some other way, we'd have those urges instead. Maybe I'm just not getting you...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I'm not saying that they need that concept. There is a difference between something being true about you, or knowing or doing something, and being able to articulate and explain it well. The wolves don't really understand and can't really explain this very well. But there is something that transcends the individual will among these wolves, and that something could be called communal cohesion for survival. That reality is true of them even though they can't articulate or explain it. There is "ought"-ness there because what they are driven to you has not only the individual actor as a reference point but also constraints from the world and the social community.

You could say the same thing about humans, though, especially considering the last few thousand years of history. We don't really understand why we care about our communities, or about feeling as if we are a fair society, or whatever. We've had a lot of trouble getting our minds around articulating it, and have had a lot of interesting ideas along the way. "Communal cohesion for survival" does seem to sum us up pretty well, though...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Again, I'm only critiquing Jerry's view. I'm not saying that there aren't any secular ethicists out there who can't get a decent semblance of moral compulsion -- there are plenty. I'm just saying that there's a reason they don't see things as he does.

Ok, maybe Jerry's views do differ from mine more than I thought. Who are these secular ethicists who do get moral compulsion, though? Most of their arguments kind of fall flat for me. The only one that I've liked the sound of is John Stuart Mill...

-- Nate

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Why the need to explain the compulsion away, though? Why can't it be arbitrary - just the way things turned out? Isn't that like asking why humans are perfectly suited to living on land rather than ocean - because humans wouldn't have been land-dwellers if we weren't. Or why humans have sexual urges - because it's how we procreate, and if we procreated in some other way, we'd have those urges instead. Maybe I'm just not getting you...

Neither of those is arbitrary, at least not in the sense I'm using the word 'arbitrary'. With land-dwellers you're talking about a direct connection between the genetic constitution of surviving human communities and living conditions of land. With sexual desire there's a direct connection between procreative function and sexual urge. (Well, I think it's clear there's more behind sexual desire than just procreation, but that's immaterial here.) So there's an "ought"-ness to them in the sense of function, and there's a grounding between the individual and the world. (The problem with a subjective morality is that it can't connect to the world; your "oughts" here are both ought explicitly grounded in the relationship between the human and the world.)

And of course I suppose you could say that the existence of these compulsions is all that you need, and that could be true depending on what kind of "ought"-ness you're really looking for. For instance, I have a compulsion toward rape, but I'd like there to be room to say that even though I have that compulsion there's no "ought"-ness behind it. If you're not looking to get that out of "ought"-ness then I think you're probably already fine.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

You could say the same thing about humans, though, especially considering the last few thousand years of history. We don't really understand why we care about our communities, or about feeling as if we are a fair society, or whatever. We've had a lot of trouble getting our minds around articulating it, and have had a lot of interesting ideas along the way. "Communal cohesion for survival" does seem to sum us up pretty well, though...

I'm not sure I'd say that we've been adrift for several thousand years, since until very recently we had very clear, thick conceptions of who we were and how the world worked. But with the options held out by consumerist capitalism, the belief that freedom is my prerogative to choose any option, and the pressure to be dissatisfied with whatever choice(s) we've already made (so that the object of our choice is consumed), everybody has to start from the ground up, and I think that's where you get the widespread aimlessness. A 13th century farmer knew exactly what and who he was.

Still, "communal cohesion for survival" is the kind of anchor that several more recent ethicists/political philosophers have taken, and there's certainly a reason for that. But I think it's materially distinct from Jerry's Subjective Morality.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Ok, maybe Jerry's views do differ from mine more than I thought. Who are these secular ethicists who do get moral compulsion, though? Most of their arguments kind of fall flat for me. The only one that I've liked the sound of is John Stuart Mill...

Well, all the Modern philosophers developed their philosophies with ethics as the goal (maybe not Descartes, actually...), so you could go for Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, etc. The bigger post-Kantian names are probably Marx and Nietzsche. More recently you might look at John Rawls, RM Hare, Peter Singer, Richard Rorty, and many others. (All of them, especially Singer, will take directions you'd probably like if you like Utilitarianism. Hare and Singer are both Utilitarians, and Rawls and Rorty are standard-bearers for politics that share most of Utilitarian anthropology. Marx and Nietzsche aren't so chummy with Mill, however.)

Peace to you,

John

[JerryLove]

Posting from a blackberry so sorry if I am missing some important part.

I do not think that moraity is arbitrary. I do not think that food preferences are arbitrary either. Certainly there are biological, cognitive, and experinced based influences. In fact, I beleve everyone is deterministic.

I don't think subjective requires arbitrary.

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by JerryLove

Posting from a blackberry so sorry if I am missing some important part.

Nice! I don't think that CGR from a Blackberry is something I've done. Does it work well enough or is it hard?

Originally Posted by JerryLove

I do not think that moraity is arbitrary. I do not think that food preferences are arbitrary either. Certainly there are biological, cognitive, and experinced based influences. In fact, I beleve everyone is deterministic.

I don't think subjective requires arbitrary.

I guess I'd put it like I did above: Can any distinction be drawn between my internal compulsion toward rape and my Subjective Morality? I agree that my compulsion toward rape is not arbitrary, but I don't think it has any kind of normative grounding in the world.

Also, on determinism and arbitrariness: Before I connected "arbitrary" with "an odd fact of fate." Determinism and fate aren't mutually exclusive because determinism views the world as entirely fate, though of course everything within that fate has a very clearly defined structure and order. My point was just that you can't confuse "is" with "ought."

[JerryLove]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Nice! I don't think that CGR from a Blackberry is something I've done. Does it work well enough or is it hard?

It's obvious that CGR was not designed for it. Some redesign work would make it a lot better. It is hard, but I thought worth it (as it was the only availble option).

Particularly bad is scrolling through text to edit, but that might be my lack of skill at a Blackberry

I guess I'd put it like I did above: Can any distinction be drawn between my internal compulsion toward rape and my Subjective Morality? I agree that my compulsion toward rape is not arbitrary, but I don't think it has any kind of normative grounding in the world.

No, I think they are very much the same... a portion of a brain that makes rape sound like fun and a portion of the brain that says "it's not what ought to be done".

Most decisions are that way "I want to eat chocolate" with "I'm full" and "but I want to loose weight". An interesting thing about the mind is that, though we percieve t as a single thought-line, it really isn't. There's a singl portion of your brain, for example, responsable for identifying people you care deeply about. If it dies, then you reognize your friends, but the people closest to you give you a "you look just like my mom" effect where you can see that they look right but they don't "feel" right.

One reason for the tendany of the oung to make poor decisions is because the portion of th ebrain related to consequences is underdeveloped.

[Stealth3si]

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

But there is still an "ought"-ness, though! I have yet to meet somebody - anybody - who does not have a sense of moral imperative. A sense of justice or a "fair go". An intrinsic compassion for someone in pain. A desire to make those they care about happy. You know what I mean.

If morality is inextricably joined to personhood, then there is no way to talk of what one ought to do without showing the value of the person.

[Jeffrey]

Originally Posted by danlong

A Atheism is a religion and they are a religious bunch, if you have any questions then come visit the freedom from religion foundation headquarters up here. They have regular religious meetings, religious songs, even religious icons and a godhead, if you will. The other poster may protest, but these are the appearances and facts. You can visit their website and find how religiously they pursue removing Christian faith tenets, or any appearance of such and so disqualify themselves as nothing more than one religion persecuting the faith tenets of others.

This is just logically odd - it's called a hasty generalization. How are we to assume that the atheists involved in the Freedom from Religion Foundation represent all atheists? The answer: we can't, and with further exploration, they don't.

Is there a set of aggressive atheists trying to diminish or destroy religion? Yes, I think so. Are there other atheists who are trying to establish an alternate system of human fellowship, introspection, and evocation to offer an alternative to religion? Yes. Are there atheists who openly praise religion as a source of liberty and stability? Yes, indeed. Are there atheists who have no interest in changing the world, and just want to live their own private lives? Yes, I know several quite well. Is there overlap between these groups (by no means exhaustive)? There certainly is.

In logical thinking, we must not impose our findings about one set on another set without proper inductive proof.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I'd run pretty far from this claim. Nietzsche, for instance, offered a very well-developed atheistic ethic. (The modern philosophers were all trying to do it but they needed some sort of deism to get where they wanted to go.) What is true is that you can't replicate a Christian "ethics" on non-Christian foundations, and when most people talk about "morals" they're thinking of it in terms ultimately built on Christianity. But of course this is only really a problem for a certain brand of humanism.

Agreed. A great primer on atheist arguments is George H. Smith's Atheism: the Case against God. Smith was an Objectivist, the atheistic Romantic philosophy established by Ayn Rand that emphasizes morality as a sort of free market ethics built on the baseline assumptions that coercing a person will lead to tyranny, and that each person has as their chief end the pursuit of a fulfilling life because there is nothing else. Objectivist morality overlaps a great deal with typical Judeo-Christian, especially modern J/C, ethics.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

The God delusion was silly.

I am dead serious.

Dawkins Idea of a zeitgeist boils down to "because I say so" when you analyze his arguments. His reason for dismissing religion for the basis of morality is assertion and most of his points leading to his idea of a zeitgeist are. Really, I bought the book hoping for better intellectual engagement and found that Dawkins is to atheism what Ken Ham is to Christianity in a lot of ways.

Jerry, I have to thank you for pointing out the biggest flaw in this book out to me years ago. Natural selection and evolution are not an explanation of abiogenesis. Someone really, really needs to point this out to Mr. Dawkins as it made me want to throw the book out the door and Sic Dr. Dino on him and watch a bad logic duel to the death.

I have a lot of respect for opponents, but I thought anybody could learn more of a thinking atheism from CGR's atheists, than Dawkins. Don't even make me bring in my argument from the preface where Dawkins makes a valid point that destroys half his argument later.

[JerryLove]

They have regular religious meetings, religious songs, even religious icons and a godhead, if you will.

So do Christians, who tell me that they do not have a religion, but a "relationship with Jesus".

This depends on what we are discussing when we say "atheist". If we are discussing this near-mythical "there certainly is no god of any sort" atheist, then I think their argument fails on the same grounds as that of theists. If we are discussing the "there is a lack of support for theistic claims", then the difference between atheism and theism is clear and this is a semantic / equivocational argument intended by the theists making it to muddy the waters.

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by JerryLove

No, I think they are very much the same... a portion of a brain that makes rape sound like fun and a portion of the brain that says "it's not what ought to be done".

Most decisions are that way "I want to eat chocolate" with "I'm full" and "but I want to loose weight". An interesting thing about the mind is that, though we percieve t as a single thought-line, it really isn't. There's a singl portion of your brain, for example, responsable for identifying people you care deeply about. If it dies, then you reognize your friends, but the people closest to you give you a "you look just like my mom" effect where you can see that they look right but they don't "feel" right.

One reason for the tendany of the oung to make poor decisions is because the portion of th ebrain related to consequences is underdeveloped.

Then there is the difference between us.

[PartTimeLurker]

Hey, sorry I've been away so long. I've been sick at home, then sick on holiday, then sick at home again, and now slightly sick at work I hope I can still keep track of where we were going in this convo...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Neither of those is arbitrary, at least not in the sense I'm using the word 'arbitrary'. With land-dwellers you're talking about a direct connection between the genetic constitution of surviving human communities and living conditions of land. With sexual desire there's a direct connection between procreative function and sexual urge. (Well, I think it's clear there's more behind sexual desire than just procreation, but that's immaterial here.) So there's an "ought"-ness to them in the sense of function, and there's a grounding between the individual and the world. (The problem with a subjective morality is that it can't connect to the world; your "oughts" here are both ought explicitly grounded in the relationship between the human and the world.)

Well I suppose it comes back to semantics again then, doesn't it? You don't need to call it "arbitrary", per se, but you can identify the natural, perfectly mundane causes that led to our developing such things as sexual urges, an aversion to the smell of mould, and a little voice in our head that tells us not to kill and rape others. You don't need a "transcendant reference point" to explain it away, and you don't really need anything more than a (naturalistically evolved) sense of compassion to legitimise it. In my opinion, that is.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

And of course I suppose you could say that the existence of these compulsions is all that you need, and that could be true depending on what kind of "ought"-ness you're really looking for. For instance, I have a compulsion toward rape, but I'd like there to be room to say that even though I have that compulsion there's no "ought"-ness behind it. If you're not looking to get that out of "ought"-ness then I think you're probably already fine.

I am with Jerry in one of his below posts on this one - it is a storm of compulsions and urges inside us that drive us do what we do. We may feel compelled towards rape, but we also feel appalled at the idea of causing another human suffering. We also feel compelled to respect our wife's trust and commitment to us, and to obey the laws of our society. We want to conceive of ourselves as "good", "upright" people, and so we feel compelled to avoid behaviours that we, individually and corporately, think of as "wrong".

We humans are communal creatures who place a lot of value on responsibility to the herd / the pack / society / our country, and so very often the good of others / the whole outweighs the desires of the individual. This of course makes the individual feel as if they are "good" or "moral", or it may just make them feel safer, because they aren't causing any harm to the wider community of which they are a part. This is a good thing (generally), and in my mind it explains away selflessness, altruism and morality fairly well. (except I'm sure that a few words from you and it'll all come crashing down, as my constructs generally do in the presence of intellectuals...)

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I'm not sure I'd say that we've been adrift for several thousand years, since until very recently we had very clear, thick conceptions of who we were and how the world worked. But with the options held out by consumerist capitalism, the belief that freedom is my prerogative to choose any option, and the pressure to be dissatisfied with whatever choice(s) we've already made (so that the object of our choice is consumed), everybody has to start from the ground up, and I think that's where you get the widespread aimlessness. A 13th century farmer knew exactly what and who he was.

Still, "communal cohesion for survival" is the kind of anchor that several more recent ethicists/political philosophers have taken, and there's certainly a reason for that. But I think it's materially distinct from Jerry's Subjective Morality.

Hmm, I probably still would. Just because we didn't think about it (too busy trying to eke out a living and all) doesn't mean that we "got it". A 13th century farmer also knew that the sun revolved around the earth (or was a god of some form, etc.), slaves weren't really people and fairies lived at the bottom of the garden. I do understand your critique of modern consumerist pop-philosophy, though, but philosophical dissatisfaction and a sense of aimlessness aren't nearly confined to the 20th / 21st century. Don't forget the Greek nihilists, the cynics, the skeptics, etc.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, all the Modern philosophers developed their philosophies with ethics as the goal (maybe not Descartes, actually...), so you could go for Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, etc. The bigger post-Kantian names are probably Marx and Nietzsche. More recently you might look at John Rawls, RM Hare, Peter Singer, Richard Rorty, and many others. (All of them, especially Singer, will take directions you'd probably like if you like Utilitarianism. Hare and Singer are both Utilitarians, and Rawls and Rorty are standard-bearers for politics that share most of Utilitarian anthropology. Marx and Nietzsche aren't so chummy with Mill, however.)

Thanks for the help, John, even if you are pointing me to the "enemy" . I am intrigued by Utilitarianism and that strain of thinking, though my lack of philosophical background can get me all muddled up over who says what. I remember reading a little Nietzsche (what rebellious teenager hasn't?), but I can't recall any way (except probably politically) in which he would conflict with Mill...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Peace to you,

John

Thanks, man.

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Hey, sorry I've been away so long. I've been sick at home, then sick on holiday, then sick at home again, and now slightly sick at work I hope I can still keep track of where we were going in this convo...

Wow, that's a lot of sick!! I was sick at the beginning of this month and only managed to get through it because my parents live near the Mexican border and sent me a nice box full of prescription medication. Hehe.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Well I suppose it comes back to semantics again then, doesn't it? You don't need to call it "arbitrary", per se, but you can identify the natural, perfectly mundane causes that led to our developing such things as sexual urges, an aversion to the smell of mould, and a little voice in our head that tells us not to kill and rape others. You don't need a "transcendant reference point" to explain it away, and you don't really need anything more than a (naturalistically evolved) sense of compassion to legitimise it. In my opinion, that is.

I don't see why the mundane and the transcendent have to be exclusive. Evolution, for instance, transcends the individual will. But you and I are still talking about very different things if for you every urge is as moral as the next -- my urge to rape and my urge to be faithful to my wife -- and this seems to be what you're saying.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I am with Jerry in one of his below posts on this one - it is a storm of compulsions and urges inside us that drive us do what we do. We may feel compelled towards rape, but we also feel appalled at the idea of causing another human suffering. We also feel compelled to respect our wife's trust and commitment to us, and to obey the laws of our society. We want to conceive of ourselves as "good", "upright" people, and so we feel compelled to avoid behaviours that we, individually and corporately, think of as "wrong".

My point is that you're blurring the distinction between compulsions of the will and "morality." Of course people desire to do various things. But those desires are subjects of morality, not morality itself. So, my desire to rape is distinct from my moral approval of rape -- they are related, I would definitely say, but they're not identical. And sometimes, driven by my desire to rape, I do morally approve of rape, but the two are still distinct.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

We humans are communal creatures who place a lot of value on responsibility to the herd / the pack / society / our country, and so very often the good of others / the whole outweighs the desires of the individual. This of course makes the individual feel as if they are "good" or "moral", or it may just make them feel safer, because they aren't causing any harm to the wider community of which they are a part. This is a good thing (generally), and in my mind it explains away selflessness, altruism and morality fairly well. (except I'm sure that a few words from you and it'll all come crashing down, as my constructs generally do in the presence of intellectuals...)

Well, no, I think that's a fine enough narration of moral psychology if you're already committed to naturalism. But there is a very meaningful distinction between what "ought" to be and how we conceive of and/or succeed in being what "ought" to be, and I think that in your explanation you're talking only about what "is" and forgetting to talk about what "ought."

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Hmm, I probably still would. Just because we didn't think about it (too busy trying to eke out a living and all) doesn't mean that we "got it". A 13th century farmer also knew that the sun revolved around the earth (or was a god of some form, etc.), slaves weren't really people and fairies lived at the bottom of the garden.

Well, I guess that's true. I was more going for "he's not aimless," but you were going for whether he knew the timeless truth. I suspect you would view his knowledge as primitive and ignorant compared to ours, but I would view his knowledge as... err... just different.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I do understand your critique of modern consumerist pop-philosophy, though, but philosophical dissatisfaction and a sense of aimlessness aren't nearly confined to the 20th / 21st century. Don't forget the Greek nihilists, the cynics, the skeptics, etc.

The cynics, skeptics, etc. had a thicker ethic than we generally give them credit for, but yeah, ethical aimlessness has definitely been around the block a few times. It just hasn't been too common.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Thanks for the help, John, even if you are pointing me to the "enemy" . I am intrigued by Utilitarianism and that strain of thinking, though my lack of philosophical background can get me all muddled up over who says what. I remember reading a little Nietzsche (what rebellious teenager hasn't?), but I can't recall any way (except probably politically) in which he would conflict with Mill...

Well, I certainly would view the Utilitarians as an enemy -- they're the ones who bombed Hiroshima and turned people into numbers, after all -- but I believe you can see good in everyone and everything. I love the works of Nietzsche, and enjoy much within the Marxist tradition.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Thanks, man.

Always. Peace.

[PartTimeLurker]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I don't see why the mundane and the transcendent have to be exclusive...

I don't know whether I'm tracking with you here, but I didn't really say anything about the exclusivity of mundane and transcendant / spiritual realities. Just that a mundane, naturalistic view doesn't seem to need a transcendant, spiritual component to make sense of human notions of morality. Obviously, of course, you disagree

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

But you and I are still talking about very different things if for you every urge is as moral as the next -- my urge to rape and my urge to be faithful to my wife -- and this seems to be what you're saying.

Now I didn't really say that, either. Maybe I'm kind of blurring this thread with the previous one we discussed in, but I thought my contention was that rather than the "morality" of an action being defined by what a supreme creator god commands, it "ought" () to be conceived of in the same way it actually, practically works out in real life: realising that a complex set of competing urges, beliefs, values and desires, mediated by a a mutually shared desire to increase pleasure and minimise pain in your life and - hopefully - in the lives of others in your community, determines the "ought-ness" and "ought-not-ness" of an action.

This is simple, it makes sense, it sounds a lot like the way the world really works and you don't have to appeal to abstract, theoretical, metaphysical concepts that may or may not have any grounding in actual perceived reality.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

My point is that you're blurring the distinction between compulsions of the will and "morality." Of course people desire to do various things. But those desires are subjects of morality, not morality itself. So, my desire to rape is distinct from my moral approval of rape -- they are related, I would definitely say, but they're not identical. And sometimes, driven by my desire to rape, I do morally approve of rape, but the two are still distinct.

I guess I agree with you here, but fail to see the point - yes, we have many desires that we do not morally approve of, and so (hopefully!) do not indulge in. I thought the question we're exploring is *why* we don't approve of said actions.

What I propose is that we don't judge these issues by what people thousands of years ago believed their god declared, but by the simple yardstick of "will this harm or help others?" It's even more universal than the Judeo-Christian paradigm allows for!

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, no, I think that's a fine enough narration of moral psychology if you're already committed to naturalism. But there is a very meaningful distinction between what "ought" to be and how we conceive of and/or succeed in being what "ought" to be, and I think that in your explanation you're talking only about what "is" and forgetting to talk about what "ought."

Hmm, see I think that you get into trouble when you start declaring what "ought" to be in that sense. All we have here is how things are. We can look at how things are - which is generally how they've always been, but with a little more history, a little more technology and a little more global consciousness - and say how we think things could change for the better, but that's as far as we can go. You're right, though - I didn't say how things "ought" to be before, though it should be obvious that I do have some ideas...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, I guess that's true. I was more going for "he's not aimless," but you were going for whether he knew the timeless truth. I suspect you would view his knowledge as primitive and ignorant compared to ours, but I would view his knowledge as... err... just different.

Not all of his knowledge, of course. He would have known much more about farming, or how to tell a horse's age by his teeth, or a million other things much better than me. His sociological, philosophical and astronomical understanding would be trumped by the average highschooler, though. (Well, maybe not the average highschooler, these days... ) Seriously, though, I have a lot of respect for non-21st Century Western cultures and the different priorities and concerns they have.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

The cynics, skeptics, etc. had a thicker ethic than we generally give them credit for, but yeah, ethical aimlessness has definitely been around the block a few times. It just hasn't been too common.

That's true. I resonate with a lot of what the cynics were about - pretty strong "moral" praxis, despite the fact that nothing matters. For that reason, I still agree with a lot of what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, I certainly would view the Utilitarians as an enemy -- they're the ones who bombed Hiroshima and turned people into numbers, after all -- but I believe you can see good in everyone and everything. I love the works of Nietzsche, and enjoy much within the Marxist tradition.

I don't really think that's fair if it's a blanket statement, but I do agree that any philosophy or political system which allows for killing thousands (millions?) of innocent civilians in a single blow needs to take a good look at itself.

I haven't really read much Nietzsche - the limits of my knowledge used to consist of "Nietzsche's dead - cop that!" - but I am intrigued by the little tidbits that I've heard about him more recently, though.

On a completely different note - I hope that things are going alright with you in RL nowadays. Last time we PMed there were various family dramas and illnesses, which always sucks. I hope all is well now, though

-- Nate

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I don't know whether I'm tracking with you here, but I didn't really say anything about the exclusivity of mundane and transcendant / spiritual realities. Just that a mundane, naturalistic view doesn't seem to need a transcendant, spiritual component to make sense of human notions of morality. Obviously, of course, you disagree

I'm saying that your examples of things that are mundane and naturalistic themselves transcend the individual will, so you haven't escaped this need for transcendence. Evolutionary theory transcends the individual will, so if you bank your ethic on it then you're banking your ethic on something that transcends the individual will.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Now I didn't really say that, either. Maybe I'm kind of blurring this thread with the previous one we discussed in, but I thought my contention was that rather than the "morality" of an action being defined by what a supreme creator god commands, it "ought" () to be conceived of in the same way it actually, practically works out in real life: realising that a complex set of competing urges, beliefs, values and desires, mediated by a a mutually shared desire to increase pleasure and minimise pain in your life and - hopefully - in the lives of others in your community, determines the "ought-ness" and "ought-not-ness" of an action.

Well, I think that this dichotomy you're working between the divine and the human ("what a supreme creator god commands" vs. "way it actually, practically works out in real life") is based on a dichotomy between the divine and human that I wouldn't really work with: you're working from "To err is human, to forgive divine" and I'm working from "the word became flesh." For that reason, you construe both the divine and human sides differently than I would. You've got one "morality" as a sheer divine decree, and the other "morality" as utilitarianism. But while any decent historical inquiry will find that my pleasure and pain are determinative factors in ethical change, I suspect there are very, very few societies whose ethics reduce to or even converge on reducing to my pleasure and pain. And of course I wouldn't conceive Christian ethics in terms of a pure divine decree.

So, in other words, (1) I wouldn't set up the contrast that way, and more importantly (2) I don't think that's actually how ethics developed or work out in real life.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

This is simple, it makes sense, it sounds a lot like the way the world really works and you don't have to appeal to abstract, theoretical, metaphysical concepts that may or may not have any grounding in actual perceived reality.

The notion of the self that goes into utilitarianism is very abstract, theoretical, and metaphysical. It doesn't seem like that because we're building on its development through 400-500 years of social memory, but it is. Just look at how innocuous it seemed when you assumed that (1) pleasure and pain would be of foremost importance to the individual, and (2) the individual would care about himself first, then maybe/hopefully others around him. But I would say that probably the majority of people who have ever existed would deny one or both of these.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I guess I agree with you here, but fail to see the point - yes, we have many desires that we do not morally approve of, and so (hopefully!) do not indulge in. I thought the question we're exploring is *why* we don't approve of said actions.

Your answer being that there is something that transcends the various behavioral impulses of the individual, that being "hedonic calculus." (i.e., pleasures outweigh pains to the greatest extent we can get)

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

What I propose is that we don't judge these issues by what people thousands of years ago believed their god declared, but by the simple yardstick of "will this harm or help others?" It's even more universal than the Judeo-Christian paradigm allows for!

Again, it seems like you're reading Christian ethics as if we had some rulebook that God laid out and that's what good and virtue and flourishing and maturity and so forth really are. I wouldn't at all say that.

Let's look at universality. Now, obviously if human ethics were grounded in a being in whose image we were made, and further that that being created the world, sustains it, and is intimately involved in directed its future, we're talking about something that's got a lot more of a claim on the world that my personal opinions about what people like the most -- the latter seems inexplicably earth-centric and anthropocentric, after all, which doesn't seem to deal with the vastness of the world. So presumably by 'universal' you're talking about something else; instead, you're talking about something that is easily accessible to any human.

Of course, I don't see why we should have a bias toward accessibility. That basically just comes from an assumption that the world should be user-friendly, and while that seems nice I see no easily accessible () reason to believe it's true. But what's worse here is that the utilitarian paradigm you've laid out here -- which I'm assuming comes with deterministic baggage -- doesn't give us easy access to moral questions. After all, what if by raping this person I turn her into somebody who fights for women's rights and brings all kinds of pleasure to future women? In other words, we aren't easily able to calculate what future effects my actions will have on pleasure and pain, so I don't have accessible what I need to make these calculations.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Hmm, see I think that you get into trouble when you start declaring what "ought" to be in that sense. All we have here is how things are. We can look at how things are - which is generally how they've always been, but with a little more history, a little more technology and a little more global consciousness - and say how we think things could change for the better, but that's as far as we can go. You're right, though - I didn't say how things "ought" to be before, though it should be obvious that I do have some ideas...

Well, my original claim was that there's no real "ought" in Jerry's view, so you don't seem to be particularly disagreeing with me here. But you do seem to want an "ought" out of utilitarianism.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

Not all of his knowledge, of course. He would have known much more about farming, or how to tell a horse's age by his teeth, or a million other things much better than me. His sociological, philosophical and astronomical understanding would be trumped by the average highschooler, though. (Well, maybe not the average highschooler, these days... ) Seriously, though, I have a lot of respect for non-21st Century Western cultures and the different priorities and concerns they have.

Maybe I should say this: I do think he "thought about it." I don't think he was engaged in the same moral project that most people in the modern West are, but I think that 13th-century farmer could explain to you who he was, why he was that, and what that meant for him. How did he fit into the great chain of being? What did his baptism and communion mean? What did it mean to be a husband, father, farmer? He couldn't answer these questions using the same language that philosophers would -- then or now -- but he definitely thought about them and knew the answers. So he wasn't at all aimless in the way people are now. Yes, he didn't have to decide everything for himself (though oddly today we don't get to decide for ourselves whether we will have to decide for ourselves!!), so in that respect he wasn't engaged in the particular project that leaves so many of us today aimless, but he was very connected in the realm of aims.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

That's true. I resonate with a lot of what the cynics were about - pretty strong "moral" praxis, despite the fact that nothing matters. For that reason, I still agree with a lot of what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes...

Ecclesiastes, I think, is all about how the mundane and transcendent don't have to be at odds with each other.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I don't really think that's fair if it's a blanket statement, but I do agree that any philosophy or political system which allows for killing thousands (millions?) of innocent civilians in a single blow needs to take a good look at itself.

For utilitarianism pleasure and pain, not people, are what matter; people are just containers. The justification of modern civilian collateral damage is based on the belief that the guiding principle is strictly numbers of pleasure and pain, leveling out qualitative distinctions between civilians and the military because civilian and military pleasure and pain are still just pleasure and pain and civilian and military containers (people) are still just containers. In fact, many ethics textbooks use this exact example to try to tease out utilitarian intuitions in students: Utilitarianism may not seem immediately intuitive to you, but we all know that Hiroshima had to be done and there's your utilitarian intuition.

Originally Posted by PartTimeLurker

I haven't really read much Nietzsche - the limits of my knowledge used to consist of "Nietzsche's dead - cop that!" - but I am intrigued by the little tidbits that I've heard about him more recently, though.

On a completely different note - I hope that things are going alright with you in RL nowadays. Last time we PMed there were various family dramas and illnesses, which always sucks. I hope all is well now, though

We got a dog yesterday, which is great. No name yet. He's a pug. Maybe we should name him Nate-dog.

Peace.

[PartTimeLurker]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

I'm saying that your examples of things that are mundane and naturalistic themselves transcend the individual will, so you haven't escaped this need for transcendence. Evolutionary theory transcends the individual will, so if you bank your ethic on it then you're banking your ethic on something that transcends the individual will.

Hmm, I do see what you're saying now.

Yes I totally agree that evolutionary theory - as well as the ethic I am proposing - *necessarily* transcends the individual. I'm all about that, man! I got a lot from the community focus of the "emerging" circles I hung around in a little while back, and a lot of that social concern has stuck with me (though chai and clothes made of hemp never took hold, fortunately).

I guess that the problem that I do have is with the idea of a personal god being behind all of that.

The way that I see things (right now, anyway), a sense of kinship with a few other feeling, loving human beings, and companionship, safety, love and passion with my partner, and a good relationship with my children, is all the "spirituality" I need. That makes me feel connected with reality, like I have my own little place in the world where I fit. Why would I need a "personal relationship with Jesus"(tm), or a set of ancient rituals to perform, or membership in a group of somewhat likeminded people, or a "divine mission of cosmic reconciliation" to give my life something that it isn't really lacking?

(Obviously, I realise that this has just strayed into my own personal issues rather than just being a rather theoretical debate... )

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, I think that this dichotomy you're working between the divine and the human ("what a supreme creator god commands" vs. "way it actually, practically works out in real life") is based on a dichotomy between the divine and human that I wouldn't really work with: you're working from "To err is human, to forgive divine" and I'm working from "the word became flesh." For that reason, you construe both the divine and human sides differently than I would. You've got one "morality" as a sheer divine decree, and the other "morality" as utilitarianism.

I do realise that, but how else can a moderately Modernist sceptic interact with the claims of theism?

On one hand I have the things that I can touch and taste and see - pleasure feels good to me, seeing people in pain is distressing, the natural world seems rather random, arbitrary and lacking in "morals", etc. - and on the other hand I see a set of beliefs which don't come naturally (to me, at least) and I need to verify them to myself. The only way to tackle this, as far as I understand it, is to judge the thing that is claimed by what I "know" already (and as a little bit of a Postmodernist as well, I feel compelled to confess that I realise I can't know anything for absolute-100%-sure, but I've got to work with something here)

Or I suppose I could just "read my Bible more" and hope that faith comes by osmosis, or I could go to some whizz-bang Christian rally and hope that assurance comes in a flurry of emotion and blazing guitar riffs...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

But while any decent historical inquiry will find that my pleasure and pain are determinative factors in ethical change, I suspect there are very, very few societies whose ethics reduce to or even converge on reducing to my pleasure and pain.

Maybe they "ought" to.

Seriously, though, would it be fair to say that to the extent that societies take their direction from factors other than the pleasure and pain caused by their actions, they begin to cause more and more needless pain? Looking at basically every society I can think of right now, I would say so... Not just "my" pleaure and pain, of course, but hopefully you know that I wasn't advocating that "look out for yourself above all" as a moral imperative.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

And of course I wouldn't conceive Christian ethics in terms of a pure divine decree.

Well why not? If God is decreeing something as wrong because it hurts others, rather than because he arbitrarily doesn't like it, isn't the morality of pleasure / pain the highest Good, and not God himself? He wouldn't have that, would he?

And there are many examples of arbitrary rulemaking in the Bible, often with severe punishments - what can I do about that but judge them by what I see and know myself, and thus judge it to be a Very Bad Thing to murder people for living in a particular city, or for working on a certain day, or for sincerely doubting dogma they've been told to believe. Seriously, if I lived in Israel in it's heydey I'd have been executed a million times over.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

So, in other words, (1) I wouldn't set up the contrast that way, and more importantly (2) I don't think that's actually how ethics developed or work out in real life.

Well then I see why you feel we're talking past each other sometimes, then. But how do ethics develop in real life, then? From my experience watching my children grow and mature, concern for the self is all there is at the start, followed by a (painfully) slow realisation that others have feelings that can be hurt just like you. I don't see any internal concepts of god or the idea of an external standard of "right" and "wrong" actions.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

The notion of the self that goes into utilitarianism is very abstract, theoretical, and metaphysical. It doesn't seem like that because we're building on its development through 400-500 years of social memory, but it is. Just look at how innocuous it seemed when you assumed that (1) pleasure and pain would be of foremost importance to the individual, and (2) the individual would care about himself first, then maybe/hopefully others around him. But I would say that probably the majority of people who have ever existed would deny one or both of these.

I disagree. And I didn't really say that. I said that there are a huge number of different things which go into each individuals personal "oughts", and the mix is different for everybody. And the idea of personal concern can't be taken out of the mix (and indeed, it would be a big issue psychologically if they had no concern for their own personal welfare).

I would say that the majority of people who have ever existed would be primarily concerned with the welfare of themselves and their families. In some cultures, I grant, their ideas of familial and societal responsibility would trump their desires, but that is a part of the mix of beliefs and urges I mentioned. They would most likely believe in a god (or a number of them), and mentally assent to a fair chunk of the official dogma they knew, but it would be just another ingredient in the mix (and for many, many people it would be a rather small ingredient, too)

How do you propose the masses of humanity prioritise their lives?

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Your answer being that there is something that transcends the various behavioral impulses of the individual, that being "hedonic calculus." (i.e., pleasures outweigh pains to the greatest extent we can get)

Well yeah, I suppose. I kind of like that.. I wouldn't be so naive as to say that there is a simple, magical formula that would give you the answer to any moral question, though.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Again, it seems like you're reading Christian ethics as if we had some rulebook that God laid out and that's what good and virtue and flourishing and maturity and so forth really are. I wouldn't at all say that.

Let's look at universality. Now, obviously if human ethics were grounded in a being in whose image we were made, and further that that being created the world, sustains it, and is intimately involved in directed its future, we're talking about something that's got a lot more of a claim on the world that my personal opinions about what people like the most -- the latter seems inexplicably earth-centric and anthropocentric, after all, which doesn't seem to deal with the vastness of the world. So presumably by 'universal' you're talking about something else; instead, you're talking about something that is easily accessible to any human.

Just a little interjection -- yes, that is what I meant by "universal". The worldview you're describing is universal in intent, but in reality it's limited to a fairly small number of people who believe in the immanent, sovereign, personal and active god of Protestant (one could say even say Reformed) Christianity.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Of course, I don't see why we should have a bias toward accessibility. That basically just comes from an assumption that the world should be user-friendly, and while that seems nice I see no easily accessible () reason to believe it's true. But what's worse here is that the utilitarian paradigm you've laid out here -- which I'm assuming comes with deterministic baggage -- doesn't give us easy access to moral questions. After all, what if by raping this person I turn her into somebody who fights for women's rights and brings all kinds of pleasure to future women? In other words, we aren't easily able to calculate what future effects my actions will have on pleasure and pain, so I don't have accessible what I need to make these calculations.

I find that example a little bit disingenuous, especially considering that Christians can't answer the same question when trying to justify God's complaisance in the issue. Obviously, (and unlike God) we can't know the future, and can only judge by what we know, so we would judge that raping that woman is wrong because of the pain you cause.

If, for a more patalable example, you don't know that downloading music is taking away from an artist's profits, or that buying Nike shoes is continuing the cycle of slave-labour sweatshops, you make your judgement from what little you know, and may come to learn later that your actions were hurting others. That's why educating people is so important - I do believe that the more people understand the ramifications of their actions on others, the more conscientiously they will act.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Well, my original claim was that there's no real "ought" in Jerry's view, so you don't seem to be particularly disagreeing with me here. But you do seem to want an "ought" out of utilitarianism.

Yes, I am coming to understand my differences of opinion with Jerry more now, thanks

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Ecclesiastes, I think, is all about how the mundane and transcendent don't have to be at odds with each other.

I agree. I think it's the overall feeling of pointlessness (whether there is a god or not), and the admonition to live in the moment, and live well, that resonates with me...

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

For utilitarianism pleasure and pain, not people, are what matter; people are just containers. The justification of modern civilian collateral damage is based on the belief that the guiding principle is strictly numbers of pleasure and pain, leveling out qualitative distinctions between civilians and the military because civilian and military pleasure and pain are still just pleasure and pain and civilian and military containers (people) are still just containers. In fact, many ethics textbooks use this exact example to try to tease out utilitarian intuitions in students: Utilitarianism may not seem immediately intuitive to you, but we all know that Hiroshima had to be done and there's your utilitarian intuition.

Yeah, I see that, and obviously I won't be taking that on board. Utlitarianism can obviously be used to justify horrible actions as much as noble ones (as almost every philosophy can), but I really, really do believe that basing your life around increasing pleasure and decreasing pain as much as you can in the lives of yourself and those around you is a good, satisfying and kind way to live. You're not a martyr, but you're not a monster either. You're a human being. You can't really disagree with that, can you?

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

We got a dog yesterday, which is great. No name yet. He's a pug. Maybe we should name him Nate-dog.

Awesome! I was called that a lot in school (in a very ironic way, considering I'm a honkie white-boy that hates rap), but you need to have an extra 'g' on the end.

-- tha original Nate Dogg