back to the beginning: morality

iambiguous–we need a viral list of ten things every citizen can do to fix this. Things that do not help the poor depend on others. Things that make the rich want to help. Links to where this is already going down with charted and peer-reviewed results.

From today’s Slate

slate.com/articles/health_an … ates_.html

But it changes nothing really. Re abortion, morality and ethics still revolve around conflicting goods. You can call the unborn “human” [conscious or not] anytime between conception and birth and it does not change the fact that aborting it is good and bad only from a particular point of view [rooted in dasein]. There has yet to be an argument that resolves this. Not one that I have heard.

This can then be taken beyond abortion to the question of animal rights as well:

My take on all this data is that it is extremely likely that all the species that can recognize themselves in the mirror or show metacognitive abilities have an advanced form of consciousness. But for any species that hasn’t yet passed these tests, we simply don’t know whether they lack the ability or just haven’t been tested appropriately. The cautious attitude, I believe, is to assume that all mammals and the octopus at the very least, but possibly many more species, have a significant capacity for consciousness.

So, the author chooses to be a vegetarian. But that too can only be a point of view. There is no way to demonstrate that all rational and ethical humans beings should be vegetarians.

Pain, stupidity and death are common, but that doesn’t give them merit. Existence isn’t a form of merit.
Allot of that isn’t necissary either. It’s like when we discovered penecilin. It made some forms of disease non leathal, or made a certain amount of death and pain unnecissary.

Pain, stupidity and death either exist or they do not. You are in pain because you did something stupid and this stupidity may in fact lead to your death.

True or false. End of story.

But morality does not revolve around this sort of thing. Instead, it revolves around behaviors in which there are conflicting narratives regarding whether the behavior was the right or the wrong thing to do. Did John merit being executed by the state because he took the life of Jim? Did John believe taking Jim’s life was merited? Was either death merited?

Staten then takes this existential quantary into the realm of political narratives that many of us are familiar with in this day and age.

But just because the world is this way [or, rather, is argued to be this way] does not relieve us of the burdon of choosing. We can only muddle through it to the best of our ability. My argument is that the “best of all possible worlds” here is democracy and the rule of law. One that revolves around moderation, negociation and compromise. One that revolves around a more sophisticated understanding of dasein.

That I am cynical regarding even this does not mean others will be though. I come into places like this trying to imagine a way to think about a world sans God a little less cynically.

[b]From “Meaning & Morality in Modernity”
By Andrew Brower Latz

In modern society we live with an ethical predicament: as our form of society has increased our material well-being, it has simultaneously leached the significance from our experience. Our intellectual life is dominated by scientific rationality, and our practical life by bureaucratic rationality (these two forms of reason are similar); and although they are very good at securing the means of life, they drain from the world the “sources of meaning and significance that traditionally anchored ethical practices”: God, community, nature. So the end result of these forms of rationality and their institutional expressions in our politics and societies, has been the undermining of both morality and meaning.[/b]

Consequently, folks like you and I will still wander in and out of forums like this in order to [perhaps] pin down the meaning of morality and/or the morality of meaning once again.

Or even to discover/invent an entirely new rendition.

But has there really been a new one of late? A narrative, in other words, that the discoverer/inventor is able to take out of her head, and, using the tools of philosophy, describe a coherent moral agenda that all rational folks are able to embrace?

Or, instead, is the “ethical predicament” all the more deeply entrenched given the assumption that God is dead?

One thing that seems rather apparent to me is that there tends to be two very differnt reactions to the “dilemma”. On the one hand, there are those who never really give it much thought at all. On the contrary, they are too busy submerging themselves in the distractions of pop culture and consumption. It is ever and always about fitting into the latest fad or fancy or fashion.

And then there are those able to make a leap [intellectually] to one or another objectivist la la land where meaning and morality are constructed by and large out of words.

And that really doesn’t leave many folks around who are willing and able to acknowledge just how far removed they have now become from what once did pass for those “traditional” comforts and consolations.

From “Morality: The Final Delusion?” by Richard Garner in Philosophy Now magazine

Am I then myself a “moral error” proponent?

On the other hand, I am always quick to suggest that any and all such “theoretical” reflections on this be brought down to earth.

Also, I would never argue that objective morality does not exist. Anymore then I would argue that God does not exist.

My point instead regarding these realtionships is that any particular frame of mind here would seem to be a complex intertwining of that which we can in fact demonstrate is true objectively for all of us [math, the laws of nature, the logical rules of language] and that which seems more in sync with what I have come to construe as an “existential contraption” rooted in “I” as dasein.

At best in my view we can only discuss these things given what we think we know is true here and now. While recognizing that what we think we know next week or next month or next year is really beyond calculating with any degree of certainty.

In other words, cue contingency, chance and change.

At the same time, morality can only be speculated about given the profoundly problematic implications of this contraption:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

Finally, in a wholly determined universe, human morality itself would seem to be just one more domino toppling over; going all the way back to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.

I just wanted to ask those who believe abortion to be immorally bad.

How many children have you adopted?

I think this line of argument would mean I have to become a pothead if applied elsewhere.

No. Just here on this forum of topic.

I meant in the context of legalization of marijuana debates. We can certainly try to find out if anti-abortionists do this or that, but it still leaves open the issues around abortion. Some of them likely have adopted children. So, we still have to do the real, tough work of figuring out the issue itself, rather than hoping that ad hom based arguments will save us the bother.

Okay, suppose they had adopted none? How effective is that as an argument that abortion ought to be legal?

And what if you come upon someone who had in fact adopted many.

Does that bring us closer to confirming that abortion is necessarily immoral?

My point of course is that the actual circumstances that might swirl around any one particular woman with any one particular unwanted fetus – baby? – bring us into contact with any number of political prejudices rooted in any number of moral narratives rooted in any number of actual lives.

So, the purpose of this thread was to explore the extent to which philosophers and ethicists are or are not able to grapple with these complexities and still manage to derive a moral obligation for all rational men and women.

You have your arguments about abortion. Others have conflicting arguments. But, in my view, we live in a world where for all practical purposes these arguments are embedded more in what I construe to be existential contraptions ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas.

From “Morality: The Final Delusion?” by Richard Garner in Philosophy Now magazine

[/b]

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.

If there is no wrong there is nothing wrong in creating morality concerning values where none had existed before and since as you say morality is nothing more than an enforcement of ideals by those with political or economic power then by your definition there is nothing wrong with that either.

So, all in all there is nothing wrong with morality or anything and your complaints becomes erroneous. One then begins to wonder what nihilists are complaining about…

A nihilist can complain about food, it’s a taste thing. So with morals.

Yet if nothing is wrong his preferences are no better than others or vice versa, everything is relative and fluid.

Sure, but he can complain. A nihilist cannot on moral grounds complain about finding a used diaper in his pizza. But given human preferences in general, he could complain, saying the management is fucked up and will lose his or her and likely other business. Nihilists are not restrained from complaining, nor is it hypocritical. My God, remember yourself in your nihilist days: complain, complain.

The new you complains via a mask. This is what the return of morals has done in your case.

Without morality or ethics, what is a complaint? Without an objective law codified there is no reason to not find a diaper in his pizza for civility revolves around laws.

I’m masking my complaints, how so?

Bingo!

But my contention here is that “right” and “wrong” behaviors either revolve around some essential truth and/or transcending font [which most call God] or around any number of hopelessly conflicting existential contraptions rooted historically, culturally and experientially in a No God world.

Then I explore [or seek to explore] the actual existential parameters of those who do “create morality where none existed before”.

In other words, in any given context, why one set of prescriptions/proscriptions and not another? And how is this related to the manner in which I construe “I” here as basically an existential contraption rooted in dasein?

Indeed, how are your own values not the embodiment of this?

Again and again and again: What on earth do you mean by this?

What particular morality out in what particular context out in one particular world construed from what particular point of view?

It is ludicrous to speak of morality as “wrong”. Why? Because whenever men and women choose to congregate into one or another village, community, state or nation, there must be “rules of behavior” that either reward or punish certain behaviors.

And all this particular nihilist complains about are those who insist that only those behaviors sanctioned by “one of us” get rewarded.

And then the extent to which this revolves more around might makes right, right makes might or moderation, negotiation and compromise.

But even here I point out over and again that this particular “intellectual” assessment is but one more existential contraption that here and now “I” happen to subscribe to “in my head”.

In no way shape or form would I ever suggest that I can demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to subscribe to it as well.

“create morality where none existed before”.

Phew. Saved me there. Well kinda.

"Without morality or ethics, what is a complaint? Without an objective law codified there is no reason to not find a diaper in his pizza for civility revolves around laws.

I’m masking my complaints, how so?"

Although, come to think about it life these days really don’t seem so bad unless you Are, objectified… It begs the question. Have not any morals standards stood in the way for anything bringing progressive change be deemed differently than Any and I mean ANY type of ethic standards. Come on can we base our already based on values and ideals towards what should and shouldn’t be correctly agreed upon somewhere else where we haven’t any “A-moral-ally” ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ variable? How was we complaining how so? I still need to KnooOooow. :dance: :-({|=

Have not we already contemplated whatever motives we thought be the actual reason for us choosing what we believed to be ‘Ultimately’ Moral

I doth think Iambiguious Protests too much. Ease up on fellow students of the game. :-k :laughing: :sunglasses: :smiley: