From “Morality: The Final Delusion?” by Richard Garner in Philosophy Now magazine
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Some years ago, I adressed the issue of morality in a No God world. Morality, in other words, that revolves around one or another translation of Humanism.
I considered possible components of that:
[b]I don’t believe that God has to be part of a moral narrative itself. After all, any number of human communities have concocted one without him. One or another rendition of “humanism” in other words. Some more rather than less “ideological”.
I am myself a moral relativist – a moral nihilist. But lots of folks claim this is tantamount to embracing the belief that everything is permitted. But, of course, that is not the way the world works at all. Historically, there have always been a number of factors that motivated us in creating functional social interaction—relationships in which behaviors are both prescribed and proscribed. Moral codes are, after all, only partiuclar rules of behaviors embedded in particular historical and cultural contexts.
And, sans God, they can be predicated on many factors. For example:
• Genetic/biological predispositions What are these? Well, of course, no one really knows for certain but it is obvious from cross-cultural ethnological studies that all people seem to have built-in capacites to experience and express a broad range of emotional and psychological states: compassion, empathy, fear, agression. We have a survival instinct. We have sexual libidoes. We have primitive impulses that stem from the reptilian part of the brain. The naked ape parts, as it were.
• Cultural predispositions Each of us is born into a culture that shapes and molds these biological/genetic tendencies into a veritable smorgasbord of actual brehavior patterns; indeed, for 10 to 12 [or more] years, all children in all cultures will become thoroughly indoctrinated to view right from wrong just like Mommy and Daddy do. Many in fact will literally go to the grave understanding little of how this works. Even fewer will make any significant changes in it. Though that seems to be less and less applicable in our “post modern world”. Here, increasingly, “lifestyles” seem to be all the rage. And that often revolves around pop culture, crass consumption and celebrity.
• Individual autonomy And yet despite receiving all of this deeply engrained acculturation as youths, we all become adults eventually and have to make our own way into and out of the moral labyrinths. In other words, we all come to intertwine these many, many existential variables into our own individual sense of reality—encompasing, in turn, own own individual moral compass. No two are ever exactly the same however. Each being the embodiment of dasein.
• Rewards and punishments These play a huge role in how we come to see the moral circumference of the world around us. We act so as to be rewarded by those we love and respect and admire and depend upon. We act so as to avoid sanctions from those we don’t. But this can become one contingency laden psychological mishmash of ambiguous and ambivalent frames of mind. Often revolving around the personas that we employ and games that we play.
• Political economy Marx was right. Human social interaction revolves fundamentally around the need to sustain biological existence. We need food and water; we need a roof over our head and clothes on our backs; we need a relatively stable environment in which to reproduce; we need folks who are able to defend us from enemies—inside and out. This is why men and women have always agglomerated into communities throughout history. And that revolves ultimately around power. It matters little what you believe is right and wrong if you don’t have the power to enforce and defend it. So, human moral agendas have always reflected the basic interests of those with the most political and economic power.
• Death A particularly tricky component here. In order to understand why we act as we do above the ground you always have to factor in how folks regard the fact that sooner or later they are going to be six feet under it.
And all the other factors I missed.
[please feel free to add to the list]
Bottom line: God is not necessary here. But God [an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent point of view] is necessary [in my view] if we shift the discussion to objective morality.
After all, without God who [what] is there to turn to when we do have conflicting value judgments about conflicting goods? [/b]
So, basically, a proponent of “moral error theory” would seem to be suggesting there does not appear to be a way [philosophically, morally, politically, socially, economically etc.] to configure the components of humanism above into something that might be construed as the secular equivalent of God.
I merely segue from that into the components of my own “moral theory”. And then invite others to flesh out their theories by taking the components out into the world that we live in.