It's carried by morons, which interact with mind fields and religiowaves to produce creatures of utmost gravity. Once the LHC is up again they'll be looking for the morons implicated in the magnet mismounting fiasco.
Materealism and morality
- Thread starter JetLeg
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JoeTheJuggler
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And this is an absolutely absurd explanation of materialism. I doubt if anyone ever adhered to such an outlook.
It's certainly not true of the views of contemporary materialists.
Yes. Spot on!
Or something that matter makes possible. My point is that running is to legs as mind is to brain. (Although I admit, that's an over simplification. Really the entire body contributes to running just as the entire body contributes to mind.)
Yes. This makes very good sense. Though I'm not sure what you mean by the immaterial. As you noted above, properties and functions of matter are certainly recognized in materialism. I'd call that sort of stuff emergent phenomena that arise at various levels of organization of matter.
I'd say the debate is between this stuff being wholly dependent on matter vs the existence of stuff like that that is wholly independent of matter. (Like disembodied minds, or seeing that is not associated with eyes, or "self" that exists without a body.) Those are all things I'd say are supernatural.
I would say, then, that he too isn't giving a fair presentation of what materialism is. It's a common argumentative technique--though fallacious. I recently read a Chick Tract where he's got a biology professor listing the "6 basic concepts of evolution" on the chalkboard. Trouble is, the concepts are actually the Creationists strawman version of evolution, and would NEVER be taught by any biology teacher. But it sure makes it easy for the good little Christian boy to outwit the horrible evil evolutionist.
I agree. I think we can go very far to understanding emotions in terms of neuroscience, biochemistry (perhaps endocrinology?) and so on. I'd look at emotions as similar to the idea of "mind"--it's another function of our bodies.
It's easy enough to test. You can inject certain substances into your bloodstream and experience emotional changes in a fairly predictable way.
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JoeTheJuggler
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Haven't you heard? New models suggest that it may be possible to split the moron, and find that it is composed of still smaller particles called ethicons (or "ethons" for short). And even these come in several flavors. . . . .
Skeptic Ginger
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I ask you again, JetLeg since you have yet to answer, where do morals exist before they are injected into our thoughts and by what means are they injected? Is your soul magically floating around in your head? Or do you think it is more likely your thought processes are a function of your physical (aka material) brain?
And if your thought processes are not part of your physical (aka material) brain, what role does your brain play in that separate mind you think exists?
And if your thought processes are not part of your physical (aka material) brain, what role does your brain play in that separate mind you think exists?
I never used the term "injected". I never used the term "soul". Saying that it is a soul or a function of a physical brain is a false dychotomy. See here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_dualism
many more options.
I do not know what role does the brain play in the seperate mind. It certainly inlfuences it a lot. Is it both a neccessary and sufficient cause? I am still thinking of it.
Ah, and by the way - in order to criticize materialism, I do not need to have a consistent opinion of my own of the alternative. I gave reasons why materialism is false. What is true? I don't know. Something different from reductionist materialism. In order to claim that theory A is false, logically, I do not need to propose an alternative theory B.
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A clarification :
I changed my mind. The position I stated in the OP is wrong. My opinion changed at post #73.
Many thanks to JoeTheJuggler.
From the dictionary of the philosophy of mind:
(http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/materialism.html)
My OP is still true with regards to reductive materialism. But it isn't true with regards to nonreductive materialism. If psychological properties can be exemplified even in an immaterial world then there is a "basis for morality".
And since the dictionary claims that nonreductive materialists are the majority, my argument was a partial strawman. Though it is still true regarding reductive materialists. (Does someone think it is false regarding reductive materialists?)
The post can be derailed to related topics, if you wish.
I still owe an answer to a few posts on this thread.
I changed my mind. The position I stated in the OP is wrong. My opinion changed at post #73.
Many thanks to JoeTheJuggler.
From the dictionary of the philosophy of mind:
(http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/materialism.html)
My OP is still true with regards to reductive materialism. But it isn't true with regards to nonreductive materialism. If psychological properties can be exemplified even in an immaterial world then there is a "basis for morality".
And since the dictionary claims that nonreductive materialists are the majority, my argument was a partial strawman. Though it is still true regarding reductive materialists. (Does someone think it is false regarding reductive materialists?)
The post can be derailed to related topics, if you wish.
I still owe an answer to a few posts on this thread.
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Yes. Even reductive materialists believe in the existence of emergent properties.
The mileage my car gets is clearly a physical property, but it's not a property of any of the individual components that make it. If I decided I was spending too much on fuel, I couldn't just open the hood, take out the number 21 and put in the number 37.
Indeed, take almost any property of a car -- its mileage, its resale value, its turning radius -- and you see that it's an emergent property of the physics of a relatively complex system.
And similarly, "thoughts" (or more accurately, if you're a strict behaviorist, "apparently thoughtful behavior) is an emergent property of the physics of brains.
I am really not sure that morality is always more beneficial to me than non-morality. In Nazi germany, it would be more beneficial for me to betray my jewish friends, than to try and save them. But would it make it moral? If (1) you don't have an absolute criteria for morality, and (2) it is not definitely true that morality is more beneficial, then why should we be moral?
When I wrote this I used the narrow definition of materialism as reductive-materialism, the view that __only__ matter exists. Since abstract ideas are not matter, they shouldn't exist according to this view. If they do exist, materialism is false. (I was wrong since reductive materialism is not the common materialism, so it is not what people probably mean when they say "materialism").
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It's a cool comparison.
It isn't perfect.
1) Theism recommends obedience instead of morality. And independent thinking (reason) is a tool that helps lots of people to stay moral instead of submissive to "god". In language, there is no field where it is existentially important to know grammar, for a native speaker.
2) In areas like abortion, we must use reason&logic, and cannot use intuition. There is no such area in the natural language. With abortion, the problem is that sophisticated, we still do not have a good answer when it is moral, and when it is not. (What really is consciousness? Philosophy&science don't have a bullet-proof answer so far... )
----
Perhaps in the field of common, everyday interactions though, morality does function like language. Need to think of it.
linusrichard
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One thing I love about you, JetLeg, is that it seems like you're always ready to learn. Some people come on here asking questions, but they're not really asking questions, they're really trying to make some kind of point disguised as a question. And no matter how thoroughly their "question" gets "answered" and their point gets refuted, they don't seem to get it. With you, it seems like your points are points, and your questions are questions, which is the right way to go about it. Sometimes you get it, and sometimes (IMHO) you don't get it, but it seems to me like you're always ready to get it. And that's a good thing!
/OT
/OT
Well, I am trying to. Honestly, in some areas my thinking is really muddled. In some areas, I feel that I cannot think critically about them. But I would love to. When it comes to abstract ideas, it is less muddled than scientific/evidence based ideas.
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JoeTheJuggler
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I'm certainly not claiming it's perfect, but I'm not sure these are essentially flaws in the analogy. . .
Again, you don't have to be a logician to make valid moral choices just as you don't have to be a grammarian to make grammatical sentences. It feels/sounds right or wrong.
Intuitionists say that any philosophical morality is just checked against what a "moral person" would deem to be right or wrong anyway.
And I do think "obedience" has something to do with moral development. In psychology they talk about pre-conventional morality (obedience based on reward or punishment) as a way of learning the norms. At some point the child should grow beyond that (and one hopes most theists do too--I would say it's a strawman to claim that theists don't internalize morality but only rely on the "thou shalt"s and "thou shalt not"s).
In a way, though, it's all pre-conventional in that having a capacity for morality is what makes our social structures function, and our social structures probably had more to do with our reproductive success than anything else.
I'm on my way out the door, so this will be only a quick response to this point. I don't agree that we necessarily "must use reason&logic" to arrive at a moral decision. Again, morality is a complex mental capacity. I think sympathy and emotion is part of it (read about the relatively recent discovery of "mirror neurons"). I think symbolic thought (and language) is also part of it.
As for abortion--both sides have used appeals to emotion to further their argument. That much is evident in the language both sides use. One side plays on our nurturing instinct toward cute babies (irrelevant to logical case), and the other side points out how tiny the fetus is--as small as the end joint of your pinky finger (also irrelevant).
And in fact emotion is certainly a part of language. We even have emotional response to speech acts like poetry and song that often abandon the rules of grammar. Even within the rules of syntax, language is often used to convey emotion. Think of movies, romance novels, drama, etc.
L The Detective
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That's a good point. Not only do I agree with you, in fact I am certain that morality is not *always* more beneficial to you.
However, what I think you are overlooking, is that if you are not *always* moral, then you are not really moral. You have to choose whether you are, in the long term, going to be moral or not. If you choose to be moral only when it suits your purposes, then you are not really being moral.
So the question is not whether it is *always* beneficial to be moral in all circumstances... the question is whether morality benefits you in the long-term. If it benefits you in the long-term, then you either have to always be moral, or pretend to always be moral. So either you have to be a good person or you have to maintain a facade.
As for absolute criteria, well there aren't any. But that doesn't mean there aren't criteria. I just don't like to use that term "absolute." There are good reasons to be moral, but I wouldn't use the word "absolute," because there will always be a certain amount of relativity.
I think you're right. Thanks for giving it some thought.
Ron_Tomkins
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Clearly you are not familiar at all with scientific disciplines such as Neuroscience
Long story short: You can and it's been done for quite a while. Do some research.
On abortion -> Even if there is some emotional basis, you have to use science&reason to determine the question.
Had not neurobiology discovered that cosnciousness depends heavily on the brain, and discovered the stage at which a fetus developed a neural system, we wouldn't have been able to have a reasonable discussion.
On the other hand, it is not clear how the brain creates consciousness, and what consciousness really is. Had we known that, we wouldn't have a problem deciding whether abortion is moral.
I am a bit confused with regards to your position, since it seems obvious to me that reason plays the vital part here. Even if both sides use emotion to further their arguments -> it is irrelevant, since the essence of the arguments is not about appeals to emotions, but about what a living being is.
On obedience -> it is not a strawman to say that many fundamentalist-theists fail to internalize morality, but act on obedience. Obedience in their explicit virtue. Take orthodox judaism for example. The whole idea of it is to follow god's law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamzer
This is an example of dogma that prevents morality.
Even, if your intuitionist meta-ethics would be true, then reason needs to function well, so the intuition would not be clouded by dogma.
Hi,
you write
" If you choose to be moral only when it suits your purposes, then you are not really being moral."
And then you claim that one should be moral because it benefits you in the long term.
But I don't see much difference between those. If you are moral because it benefits you in the long term, then actually you are moral just because it suits your purposes (long-term, in this case). And then - are you really moral?
This is why I referred to this view as "nihilistic" which is a bad choice of a word. I meant to say that saying that morality is a "useful idea" means that if morality is decided upon what is useful to you, it is not really about morality.
What are your criteria for morality, even if not absolute?
The reason I think that the idea of "objective morality" is such a good one, is because it can explain the attitudes we have in real life. If a person kills another person, then we think that he "really" did something bad. And if he thinks he did something good, we think he is "wrong". This is the language of objective reality. Also, the idea of "objective morality" can explain the fact that we can use reason to advance our moral understanding. How could we use reason if there were no objective moral reality?
Some philosophy text I have read claims that even if morality is objective, the question still remains what does it consist of -> objective good and bad rules? objective good and bad acts? objective good and bad personal traits? objective good and bad intentions? I think it is a good point.
But I am very far from having built a good philosophic understanding of what morality is.
You can make a long story short if you just provide a definition of "feeling", using the language of physics.
Would you agree that it is a scientific discovery that feelings are different interactions of various chemicals in the brain?