What is the appeal of "objective morality"

[Belz...]

I'm kind of interested in hearing them as well.

 

[phiwum]

I'm kind of interested in hearing them as well.

Pretty sure the kind of question David refers to is what he mentions upthread: Can moral emotions arise in an intelligent atheistic mind?

If I understand the question correctly, it is this: Consider a rational, self-interested person who does not believe in an afterlife and hence does not believe that he will be judged and rewarded or punished according to the morality of his behavior. What could possibly motivate such a person to behave with a necessary moral concern for others (prudential reasons notwithstanding)?

I think this is related to Kant's so-called moral argument for the (presumption of) the existence of God, but it's been decades since I read that. I've not read Dostoevsky, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I think this is what David is talking about.

 

[The Greater Fool]

- can you give any example of what you would call moral behaviour, that is inherently beyond any scientific investigation?

Vegetarianism?

It seems to me that the nutritional and environmental impact may go into the moral choice and may be used to evaluate the results, but can't weigh in on the moral question itself.

 

[tsig]

Pretty sure the kind of question David refers to is what he mentions upthread: Can moral emotions arise in an intelligent atheistic mind? If I understand the question correctly, it is this: Consider a rational, self-interested person who does not believe in an afterlife and hence does not believe that he will be judged and rewarded or punished according to the morality of his behavior. What could possibly motivate such a person to behave with a necessary moral concern for others (prudential reasons notwithstanding)?

I think this is related to Kant's so-called moral argument for the (presumption of) the existence of God, but it's been decades since I read that. I've not read Dostoevsky, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I think this is what David is talking about.

IOW can we have morals without god.

Also called the Spock fallacy, atheists are nothing but unemotional robots.


Can theists have their own morals since they get them from god?

 

[tsig]

Pretty sure the kind of question David refers to is what he mentions upthread: Can moral emotions arise in an intelligent atheistic mind?
If I understand the question correctly, it is this: Consider a rational, self-interested person who does not believe in an afterlife and hence does not believe that he will be judged and rewarded or punished according to the morality of his behavior. What could possibly motivate such a person to behave with a necessary moral concern for others (prudential reasons notwithstanding)?

I think this is related to Kant's so-called moral argument for the (presumption of) the existence of God, but it's been decades since I read that. I've not read Dostoevsky, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I think this is what David is talking about.

Since Christians think morals are imposed by god the question is "Can atheists have godly emotions?'.

 

[phiwum]

IOW can we have morals without god.

Also called the Spock fallacy, atheists are nothing but unemotional robots.


Can theists have their own morals since they get them from god?

I don't think that the only alternative to deep moral motivation is an unemotional robot.

And I don't know what you mean by the final question.

But in any case, I was just stating David's concern. I don't have a well-considered opinion on the matter. I'd like to think that, if morality really does express objective norms recognizable by rational beings, at least after careful consideration, then one does not need the promise of eternal justice in order to do what's right. Kant disagreed, as I understand it, but I never was certain why.

 

[phiwum]

Since Christians think morals are imposed by god the question is "Can atheists have godly emotions?'.

Not at all!

You lump all Christians together for no good reason. Many classical ethical philosophers were Christians who believed nonetheless that moral norms can be derived from reason alone, not merely from appeal to authority.

As I mentioned earlier, Kant pointed out that we cannot recognize God is good, unless we have a prior concept of goodness not derived from God.

 

[Belz...]

Can moral emotions arise in an intelligent atheistic mind?

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Consider a rational, self-interested person who does not believe in an afterlife and hence does not believe that he will be judged and rewarded or punished according to the morality of his behavior.

Hey, that's me!!

What could possibly motivate such a person to behave with a necessary moral concern for others (prudential reasons notwithstanding)?

Genetic programming and social upbringing?

 

[Pup]

A lot ethnocentric, your outlook. Do you think that people of other cultures are not able to argue?

Perhaps I will be able to do devil’s advocate. Here we go.

My name is Nadifa and I am a Somalian mother. I live in The Hague and I want to do the ablation of clitoris to my daughter. I love my daughter Dolai. I am a good mother. I have protected her when my country was in war with danger from my life. You see this scar on may face. This is because I have fought to save my daughter. And I want to do the ablation because I love my daughter. Here, in Europe, the men are luxurious and have not any fear of God. And I have not any mean to defend my daughter from men. Because the devil’s temptations are everywhere and the flesh of a girl is weak. I have not any other mean to preserve her eternal life. Because the virginity is lost when a woman plays sex with pleasure. Sexual pleasure is the Evil. And if my child loses her virginity he will be condemned for the eternity. I cannot support the idea of my daughter was condemned by God. I cry every night when I thought so. I need to do it. Because I love my daughter. ​

Is Nadifa illogical or we are disagreeing on the main principle of her moral system?

NOTE: Please, don’t attribute to me Nadifa's moral principles. I agree with you that ablation is abhorrent and I have fought for years against it as volunteer of International Amnesty in Spain. I am adopting the position of Devil’s advocate to show that moral disagreements are not frequently a matter of lack of logic or argumentation, but the different starting points.

Ethnocentric? I thought it was ethnocentric for annnoid to say that it would be hard to find someone to argue for it, when that's only true if one excludes all ethnicities but one's own.

If you mean because I couched the reasons in sociological rather than cultural terms, I'd say the same thing about things in my own culture. Circumcision for men, whether Jewish or not: an ingroup-outgroup marker, social control by either a Rabbi or physician, etc. Various food/drug prohibitions among social groups whether religious or secular, same thing. Yes, I know people will state other reasons and sometimes the other reasons are also legitimate, but I see no reason to pretend a great deal of arbitrary social pressure doesn't go on in every culture, whether my own or another.

 

[tsig]

Not at all!

You lump all Christians together for no good reason. Many classical ethical philosophers were Christians who believed nonetheless that moral norms can be derived from reason alone, not merely from appeal to authority.

As I mentioned earlier, Kant pointed out that we cannot recognize God is good, unless we have a prior concept of goodness not derived from God.

Then I'm sure you will be able to name names and link links.

I notice you carefully hide behind shields of others words providing you with an instant deniability if anyone argues against those words.

 

[phiwum]

Then I'm sure you will be able to name names and link links.

I mentioned Kant in the post you're replying to.

Mill is another example. At least I believe he was a Christian, and it is clear from his justification of the principle of utility that he does not rely on divine authority but rather rational considerations.

Please pardon the lack of links for now, but I'm using my phone and I find the interface clunky. I can link to quotes later.

I notice you carefully hide behind shields of others words providing you with an instant deniability if anyone argues against those words.

You said something about what Christians believe. How am I to show that this is not a universal belief, aside from using others ' words?

In any case, very often my mind is not settled on the matters we discuss. Hence, I don't express my own opinion explicitly, because I don't have one.

 

[phiwum]

Phiwum, some day, these guys are gonna nail you on... well... whatever it is you're guilty of.

It's a problem with playing the long, slow game.

But if I can just fool 'em for another decade or two, my plans will come to fruition.

 

[Leumas]

IOW can we have morals without god.

Also called the Spock fallacy, atheists are nothing but unemotional robots.


Can theists have their own morals since they get them from god?

Which after 334 posts brings us back to where we were on post #3.

If morality is not something that is part of the human evolutionary process and is not relative and subjective but instead is an objective reality then that entails that their sky daddy must be the one who set those "laws" outside of humanity and human nature.

In their warped illogical way of "reasoning", if morals did not emanate from human essence then it must come from some other essence which then they proceed to assign as their imaginary friend and more specifically their ill begotten son of a ghostly 1/3rd of the piece of vile fetid monstrous turd who is the Sky Daddy invented by Imperialist Persian Zoroastrian missionaries as a means for pacifying the Canaanite/Phoenician/Assyrian populations of ca. 450 BCE.
They keep on ignoring utterly any explanation based upon evolution and social evolution because of course to them evolution does not make any sense when applied to biology let alone when applied to sociology and anthropology.

In summary... objective morality ---> external rules ---> voila Ten Commandments.

Also related to that desire to shove their sky daddy through the trap doors of illogic is the desire to maintain that the descriptive rules of nature we have been able to derive as a means for describing what is, are PRESCRIPTIVE LAWS of nature that mandate what should be. Consequently, yet again, their imaginary friend and more precisely his ill begotten son must be the ones who ordained things be as they are.

In summary... prescriptive laws of physics and morals ---> a prescriber who ordained them ---> PRESTO ... an ill begotten son who became a human blood sacrifice to his adulterous rapist sky daddy who prefers wife-pimping cowards over all of humanity.

 

[Leumas]

Vegetarianism?

It seems to me that the nutritional and environmental impact may go into the moral choice and may be used to evaluate the results, but can't weigh in on the moral question itself.

Christians argue that homosexuality is immoral and that it is a choice.

So does being a homosexual being non-conducive to reproduction of the species then prove that indeed the Christians are right?

Can there be an explanation for homosexuality using biological and sociological evolutionary processes?

Or is it something that a homosexual chooses over and above his/her genetic makeup and thus must be from THE DEVIL as Christians want to maintain?

 

[The Greater Fool]

Christians argue that homosexuality is immoral and that it is a choice.

So does being a homosexual being non-conducive to reproduction of the species then prove that indeed the Christians are right?

Can there be an explanation for homosexuality using biological and sociological evolutionary processes?

Or is it something that a homosexual chooses over and above his/her genetic makeup ad thus must be from THE DEVIL as Christians want to maintain?

All reasonable questions.

The request I was attempting to fulfill was for an example of a completely reasoned moral choice. Vegetarianism seems to fit the bill, while Homosexuality is, as you point out, not a choice (genetic).

 

[phiwum]

I mentioned Kant in the post you're replying to.

Mill is another example. At least I believe he was a Christian, and it is clear from his justification of the principle of utility that he does not rely on divine authority but rather rational considerations.

Please pardon the lack of links for now, but I'm using my phone and I find the interface clunky. I can link to quotes later.

Here's the quote from Kant that I had in mind (Groundwork):

Nor could anything be more fatal to morality than that we should wish to derive it from examples. For every example of it that is set before me must be first itself tested by principles of morality, whether it is worthy to serve as an original example, i.e., as a pattern; but by no means can it authoritatively furnish the conception of morality. Even the Holy One of the Gospels must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognise Him as such; and so He says of Himself, "Why call ye Me (whom you see) good; none is good (the model of good) but God only (whom ye do not see)?" But whence have we the conception of God as the supreme good? Simply from the idea of moral perfection, which reason frames a priori and connects inseparably with the notion of a free will. Imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, i.e., they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but they can never authorize us to set aside the true original which lies in reason and to guide ourselves by examples.​

Both bolding and italicization added for emphasis.

For Mill, see this chapter on the "ultimate sanction" of the principle of utility. It is not derived from authority, but he gives an argument as to why it is the right moral principle. This argument is more or less a plausibility argument, since he admits that first principles (like the principle of utility) do not admit of proof.

However, Mill may not be a good example. I had presumed that, like most of his time, he self-identified as a Christian, but the truth seems more complicated. So, perhaps we should leave him out.

My mistake regarding Mill.

 

[phiwum]

If this source is authoritative on the views of Catholics, then perhaps Catholicism counts for my point:

Catholics believe that acting morally means acting in accordance with the eternal laws of God, which are written into the human heart so deeply that even those who know nothing of God can follow the path of morality. Natural law, as this interior marking is called, comes to humans through their capacity to reason, which sparks the conscience to respond to the eternal law. This means that people of other faiths and no faith at all have the capacity to act as morally as Catholic Christians, although they will struggle more since they will not have the benefit of the sacraments that open them to the grace to resist sin.​

This suggests that, perhaps morality comes from God in some sense, but it is discoverable via reason and is in that sense objective and independent of religious belief.

That suffices to show that not all Christians think that morality comes only via the authority of God and hence that atheists cannot know moral law.

What it doesn't settle is David Mo's question, which wasn't about what Christians believe, but rather whether atheism is inconsistent with moral motivation (if I understand him correctly).

 

[phiwum]

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Hey, that's me!!



Genetic programming and social upbringing?

As this is David Mo's question, not mine, I won't respond to your suggestions.

It's not an issue I've thought about much at all.

 

[Leumas]

All reasonable questions.

The request I was attempting to fulfill was for an example of a completely reasoned moral choice. Vegetarianism seems to fit the bill, while Homosexuality is, as you point out, not a choice (genetic).

That is what I am trying to say... seems.

Just like homosexuality seems like a choice to the theists but now we know better, I am saying that what seems like a choice in many many things might not be such a clear cut case as it seems if we use science to study them.

When I was young and fit as a fiddle I used to run miles and miles every week. On many occasions I used to get a craving for butter. It is not that I liked butter or even could tell the difference between it and margarine... but somehow I would get a hankering to sit down and butter a nice doughy fresh baguette with lots of REAL butter and eat it just like that... no other thing, just butter on bread.

So my brain was telling me that I needed whatever it is that my brain has learned it can get only from real butter on baguettes.

From observing the numerous wives and girlfriends p) I had I am absolutely sure that the craving for chocolate they get a certain time every month is due to something the brain needs and recognizes it can obtain from DARK chocolate.

So could it be that vegetarianism is satisfying an aversion/need that the brain decided is better satisfied by only eating vegetables?

But here is another consideration... social pressure!!

Many vegetarians have become so because of parents or friends or some other social pressure so it is not really the clear cut case of choice as it seems.

Do not also forget conditioning and other types of inducements for behavioral changes that can make a person "willingly" do things that do not exactly tally with their evolutionary imperatives... e.g. fighting for a king or tribal leader etc.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

That is what I am trying to say... seems.

Just like homosexuality seems like a choice to the theists but now we know better, I am saying that what seems like a choice in many many things might not be such a clear cut case as it seems if we use science to study them.

When I was young and fit as a fiddle I used to run miles and miles every week. On many occasions I used to get a craving for butter. It is not that I liked butter or even could tell the difference between it and margarine... but somehow I would get a hankering to sit down and butter a nice doughy fresh baguette with lots of REAL butter and eat it just like that... no other thing, just butter on bread.

So my brain was telling me that I needed whatever it is that my brain has learned it can get only from real butter on baguettes.

From the numerous wives and girlfriends p) I had I am absolutely sure that the craving for chocolate they get a certain time every month is due to something the brain needs and recognizes it can obtain from DARK chocolate.

So could it be that vegetarianism is satisfying an aversion/need that the brain decided is better satisfied by only eating vegetables?

But here is another consideration... social pressure!!

Many vegetarians have become so because of parents or friends or some other social pressure so it is not really the clear cut case of choice as it seems.

Do not also forget conditioning and other types of inducements for behavioral changes that can make a person "willingly" do things that do not exactly tally with their evolutionary imperatives... e.g. fighting for a king or tribal leader etc.

So good is natural and bad is unnatural?
Since when has the use of violence been declared unnatural by science?