A moral system is a set of rules, internally consistent (insofar as it is a system) and designed to inform all social instiututions, such as laws, government itself, religion, commercial arrangements, and the interaction of individuals within social groups, where other explicit rules do not apply. It’s purpose is to standardise the basis for these explicit rules.
This system is invariably the result of a social contract, broadly defined. The moral values of any group do not precede the social contract, but are the result of it. The moral values are these rules themselves, adopted for the purpose of obtaining a general regulative value - this is an extramoral value.
The need for regulative values is, in turn, created by social institutions themselves. These institutions precede moral values. They are created for extramoral reasons. Thus, morality has as its source broader social entities. The desire for durable social institutions creates the need for morality. What creates the desire for durable social institutions is another subject.
“Right” and "wrong’, then, are contigent values. Contingent, ultimately, on extramoral social considerations. A “good” morality is not one that serves “good”, but one that serves the social exigencies of the group that adopts it.
There’s always Kierkagaard’s self conciously anti-rational view of morality. His line is that morality can only be constituted from within, that it can only be “real”, in so far as it is subjective, anti systematic and steps outside “the rules” (ironically it can only be real to the degree it is non objective!!) It can only be “felt” in so far as it has no proof - in fact the less proof, the better the faith and the more real the morality. Any socially constituted system of rules would be an aproximation to some real felt experience that slips further and further from morality - the evasion of running into “the crowd”
So much for mysticism!
I don’t really buy it myself (hey we have to run society SOME WAY!!) tho’ I like his passion
When the leaves of Autumn turn brown we are to individualize the conceptuality of reality … we therefore realize that we are no more circumfrenced by the spectrum of knowledge than are the lesser more simplistic anomilies of what we like to call “the center of the universe” (i kid - we … obviously know that we are not the center) but the leaves nevertheless rotate around the metaphorical trunk of centricity … they are in efect brown in an otherwise cynically luminated world… its the leaves that bring forth truth we as a human race are not even remotely concerned with humantity… “There is so little LOVE in the World” … Compromised by neverending threats of eternity, we vaguely remember the brilliance of a Being far superior than concievably rendered by our selfish paradigm … yet we still plunge through the mist of uncertainty only to discover that which we already knew…in falling Its the Leaves that lift us to higher rounds of life…
EDIT: Apparently one of my friends thought it would be cool to post a ‘philosophized’ comment. The result is the run on ridiculousness above.
You could say that simplicity and conciseness, the products of generalized moral rules, are motivated by epistemological norms, which are “extramoral”. I’m not sure morality has a stated purpose, though any moral system will be prescriptive, proscribing among other things acceptable and mandatory purposes.
Just as the chicken and egg coevolved, so did morality and society. Neither could exist without the other. If I was in Iraq I wouldn’t be able to so leisurely drive down to the grocer and pick up food. The norms governing human hebavior, not just what they should follow but what they do in fact follow, is what allows me to proceed without fear to everyday destinations. So even Mackie has to say that, in some sense, there are “moral norms”. He would probably call them “social norms”. These norms, whatever you call them, are what in fact regulates behavior within a society. If people no longer followed the norms, or anything close to them, anarchy would break out and you just wouldn’t have a society anymore.
We can ask the “should” question, but there’s no good way to answer it. That is, even though people do in fact follow certain social norms (most of the time anyway, or else they’d be “laws” and not “norms”), should they follow them? To answer this though to beg the question against those that do not accept the same answer you do.
I’m not sure that there is a such thing as an “extramoral reason”. Social instutions are objects in this world and so come about through causal means. But no one questions that, and causes are not “reasons”.
You are confusing causes with reasons. One can be caused to act a certain way but nevertheless be acting contrary to moral norms. Does a moral norm require someone to hold it? An absolutist would say not. Let’s say WWII Germany successfully eradicated everyone that disagreed with Nazi ideals. Would that make those ideals right, even though no one any longer disagreed with them? It seems problematic to say that a moral argument can be won by killing everyone that disagrees with you. One can just bite the bullet here, but that would go against common intuitions.
Don’t confuse morals with cultural means to convey these morals. Here is some psychology I like to use to identify peoples morals and patterens of defeat.
“”
Motivation dictates “drive” (or means to achieve your motivation). When this drive becomes your subconscious response, you in fact become your drive. This is where examining your integrity is important, to assure you don’t “uglify” your spirit. If your integrity says that the end is more important then the means, then you will become a person as cut throat as your drive. This will complicate your demeanor, and make you seem ugly to others by your demeanor.
Then some children were brought to him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray. But the Disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus, however, said,“Let the children come to me, and stop keeping them away. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to people like these.”
Taken from Matthew 19
Callousness = being lesser then the purity of a new spirit. Usually from dealing with people that abuse them or unhealthy stress (road rage,self-centered bosses, school, NY), witch creates fight or flight syndrome; and perpetuates most identity complexes. When the victim overcomes this oppression,… They become hardened, and use this hardness to victimize others. Unless they hold onto things from before they become calloused. But that takes concious will power beyond the strength and time of most humans.
Self defeating patterns. Almost all mental problems are still around because they are self defeating patterns.
IE the physical abuser has stress that creates frustration. Maybe then alcohol allows him to exhibit some adrenalin witch subdues a situation. The reward is the adrenalin release, and the quite of the victim. But this only allows them to temporarily hide from the problem. The stress continues to build; witch builds a new level of frustration every time they blow up.
1
IE The bully has a level of negative self-esteem. He seeks out others weaker then them to tear apart their self-esteem. The idea is both self-esteem levels are the same, but the bully tears down the victim to make his own self-esteem seem bigger. Yet this is only a distraction from achieving attention and acceptance. Thus the levels of low self esteem always stay the same,… and they seek others to tear down to make their own seem higher.
2
IE You might feel ugly,… and cannot add up to the social norm set by TV. So you avoid all the images(people) that intimidate you. Thus stifling your options in finding love. It’s this very mentality that allows people to hurt relationships. They will treat certain images types the same way, instead of trying to progress past issues.
3
Jesus preached about the best things to combat these. Contentness, Hope, and the Holy Spirit. It’s all about how you define yourself, and how you achieve happiness. If your spirit is content and hopefull, you can take worldly things at stride. If you’re discontent, you are probably looking for as many instant gratifications as possiable to keep your soul distracted about this discontentness. People look at it as leveling out their demeanor. Work hard and play harder is the motto.
“”"
People gain their self-esteem by how they get their attention and acceptance. If they flaunt the universal worldly things, they tend to be misperportioned spiritually.
While I was watching TV. A preacher lady said, feelings of love joy peace ect. on down to self control. These spiritual feelings can not exsist in an individual with out love. No self control with out love. So the real psychology comes down to gaining love attention acceptance friends and family. Then the use of the Holy Spirit to heal the soul, and the Bible reflect on the mentallity to change. Otherwize spiritual healings won’t last if you mentally have the thought process that brings you back to the hatred or greed or…
Geez, you make one mistake with that qote thing and the whole post goes to pieces.
IHP - I’m not sure morality has a stated purpose
F - If it has no purpose, we can stop talking about it right now. Yet you continue.
IHP - Just as the chicken and egg coevolved, so did morality and society. Neither could exist without the other.
f - That morality could not exist without society is a truism. I don’t do truisms. You are confusing coincidence with causation.
IHP - We can ask the “should” question, but there’s no good way to answer it.
f - Morality is only about the "should’ question. No one said it would be easy.
IHP - I’m not sure that there is a such thing as an “extramoral reason”.
f - Sure there is. Like the reason yeast makes bread rise. There is no moral component to that.
IHP - You are confusing causes with reasons
No. You are simply confusing two sense of the word “reason”.
IHP - One can be caused to act a certain way but nevertheless be acting contrary to moral norms
Granted. What has that got to do with my point? You are confusing “moral system” with “moral action”.
IHP - Let’s say WWII Germany …
I don’t do Nazi analogies, either. And I have no regard for common intuitions. Common intuitions are rationalist precepts. The picture of morality I paint here has got nothing whatever to do with common intuitions. You mistke this view for a rationalist perspective, I think. I don’t know the causes or the reasons for that. My prescription has nothing to do with everyone agreeing with the rules, only that they agree to the rules.
This is a bad argument. We talk about many things that have no purpose. Oil has no purpose, yet we have a purpose for it.
I’m not sure what this is. All of logic is based off truisms, and you use logic I hope. Sometimes pointing out a truism is helpful, especially if it is not obvious.
If morality is about the “should” question, then we must entertain the possibility that society has nothing to do with what is moral, since society can go wrong. If society cannot do wrong, then we are doing anthropology, not morality.
If you want to use reason that way it is fine. So we have at least three types of reasons: internal, external, and causal.
IHP - Let’s say WWII Germany …
Well you could very well substitute your bogeyman of choice. Here’s one everyone hates: A society of child molesters. Unlike a society of thieves or murderers, there’s no reason such a society would just fall apart. In fact, we have evidence such societies existed. Was it OK for Socrates to rape little boys? (By today’s standards, what he did was definitely rape.) Do you say yes or no? To say “yes” is to give up one’s own standards for ancient Greek standards. But what reason could you have to do that, given that they are not your own standards? To say “no” on the other hand is to acknowledge norms external to ancient Greek society. That is, you would be embracing norms that are independent of the society in which the actions took place. That would seem to undermine your link between society and morals.
And if you don’t like that example or “don’t do ancient Greece”, it would be downright uncharitable not to substitute your favorite bogeyman in this argument.
I have sympathy for this view, but straying too far from “intuitions” and you start babbling nonsense. Either that or your interlocutor can legitimately accuse you of changing the subject. This actually happens a lot, especially in metaethics.
Philosopher A: “Yes, I have established morality. Here it is.”
Philosopher B: "Well you have certainly established a unique and uncontroversial way to pick out what you call ‘morality’, but why should we care about this thing you call ‘morality’?’
Part of the appeal to “intutions” is to try to figure out exactly what we’re talking about. This is brought out very clearly in Chomsky’s work. He wanted to figure out what the grammatical norms of language were. To figure this out, he constructed sentences and asked himself, “does this sound right when I say it?” That is, “does it conform to intuitions of how a sentence should be put together?” This is why people dream up hypothetical scenarios all the time in morality. I may be operating with a certain set of ethical norms but not know how to explicate them. By presenting myself with certain hypothetical scenarios, I can more clearly see which norms I’m in fact operating with.
If we’re not pumping intuitions, then we’re either doing empirical science or analytic math. Anything that you could argue from in place of intuitions would always be trumped by intuitions. It’s one thing to say you’re not using intuitions, or even to give up one intuition for a stronger one (reflective equilibrium). But if you’re arguing for something that is (1) not empirically testable, (2) not analytically true, and (3) has no intuitive appeal, well then I don’t see what you’ll be left with. I don’t see how you could fill in (4) so that I would have any reason to believe it. This is a bit of an argument from ignorance, but also a challenge in a way. I’d like to see what (4) could be. Right now I can’t.
I don’t know about “rationalist”, but I’ll admit to really only understanding analytic philosophy. But even if you weren’t, I’m not sure that would let you escape from it’s criticisms. Can someone who isn’t doing physics disobey natural forces? Can someone who isn’t doing math make an inequality equal?
I do have sympathy with your conclusion about the contingency of morality. However, I don’t think this contingency has anything to do with natural causes, such as social processes. Rather, the contingency, in my view, is a fundamental arbitrariness. At a certain point, we just have to accept the norms we do accept, and realize that there is no further argument for them, even though others do not share this acceptance nor can be convinced through any rational discussion to acquire this acceptance.
This is sort of a limbo between absolutism and relativism, but I don’t see anything other metaethical options that are palatable, to my tastes anyway.
IHP - The only purposes are purpose we have. That’s all the word means. except to an absolutist of some kind. You don’t seem to recognise that mine is not an absolutist position. Sociey can concern itself with what is moral if it chooses. It’s all about chosing. I am presenting a choice.
Social processes are not natural, or they are. What does natural mean?
I’m not going to go line with you here. I smell a rat.
I’m guessing you automatically take a meta-ethical view, based on something you read in A. J. Ayer.
I have read Ayer, too. His position does not, despite what is commonly believed, preclude normative ethics. It might surprise you to know that my position is actually born of Nietzsche, Russell and Ayer.
The contingency of morality is born of an arbitrary view, yes. All our views are, in the end, arbitrary. We simply make a choice, based on our general social needs. Mine, in the end, is a meta-ethical view.
It’s meta-ethical in the traditional snese of ethics, it does not allow moral arguments with premises that have a truth-value, there are no rules to obey except the ones we say.
You accuse me of what I already admit. You have thoroughly mistaken my point.
addendum - I am not asking you to “believe” this. I give a quick (this is a message board) historical rendering. Then, it is up to you to accept or reject my prescription. It is not math. It is not science. It is to be accepted on instrumental grounds only. I reject Rawls, I reject Kant. My position has nothing to do with them. It is not presentede as “true”, but as a useful perspective.
There can be no bad morals because that would mean that an act could be opposed to a determined teleology. If everything is determined, then everything is morally sound, if we equate moral acts with causes and effects. Nothing is an accident.
This is fairly simple. “Good” and “bad” morals can only happen where there is an end in sight. As such, an act is good or bad based on what it is for, but this personalization of the value of one’s act, this intention and end, is not the purpose of the events which occur in the act. The personal intention is a contingency, the physical events are necessary, the description of the events are “moral conversation,” and subject to endless thetical contrasts and comparisons. The act itself is not polar because it is just that…action. The intent of the act, although not the primacy or purpose of the act, is evaluated according to its utility toward an end.
That end is death. The origins of the value system of human morality are in the language of communicating the anticipation of death…
Suddenly everyone walking on the busy streets stopped, and standing there, a crowd of one thousand people, there was complete silence. Everyone looked at the person beside them and said: “can you believe that we’re both going to die? That’s some serious shit, man. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
My theory is even simpler. Instinct carries with it a tendency of behaviors which are charitable, and are so because what were once acts of arbitrary nature and seemingky random, at such time when genetic systems were unorganized and evolving at a faster rate, became more organized through the advance in complexity. Slowing down meant larger equalibriums could be created (consider the universe during its first “three seconds” of existence-- the laws as we know them did not exist…yet there was teleology, only faster). Whether individual cell or a colony of cells, the distribution of energy between the individual parts was “budgeted,” so to speak, and there was a greater and more efficient exchange rate between them. Until ths kind of civilization, elementary molecules and microbes had one thing in mind…moving in one direction and consuming anything in its path. The colony, on the other hand, was organized and individual roles evolved. At this elementary level, the only thing distinguishing similiar organisms from others was anatomy, and the colony was the consequence of similiar things banded together for one reason only. Sex.
Asexual organisms are arbitrary amoral entities. Gender based organisms are teleological moral entities. The founding principle for this proof is the charity of exchange and contract between two genders seeking to replicate.
Here is the problem. If language can produce truth dilemmas (viva la relativism) in arguments regarding the quality of acts where the only end is reproduction, then it would seem that language is entirely extraneous, almost a burden, to the process of the evolution of the human organism. Yet it is through and with language that the efficiency of civilization and organization has occured in such sweeping leaps. Language is like an appendage, in that respect.
Somewhere between the teleology of “interacting entities” there is a necessary truth or “law” that resides behind the physical events, and a contingent case or “experience” that creates the intentional structures of consciousness, which cannot possibly “effect” the events in the world if it (consciousness) is not cause of the event but the effect instead, which is what I’m putting my money on.
No matter what I do, I always end up with another form of transcendent theory as a replacment to another. I swear to God I am not trying to do this. I reach for Spinoza and he slips through my fingers like Cartesian sand, every time.
Where is Dunamis? Somebody get Dunamis and bring him to me at once.
Detrop - If everything is determined, we do not need to discuss morality, or anything else, for that matter. I suppose that if we do anyway, it’s because everything is determined. But if it is determined, it is necessary. So it’s necessary to discuss morals. Unles we don’t, in which case that is what is determined.
I didn’t read the rest, which is okay, because everything is determined. I had no choice.
All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated, is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.
So detrop,
If consciousness/awareness is not the prime mover, rather the effected, in concordance with reciprocity, as aids genetic dominance … what leads to the state? You didn’t say? Does morality really equate to the social extant for survivability?
No commentary, verbal, written or digitally transmitted by this poster is meant to assert, imply or suggest that he is capable of conversant activity with anyone who uses the word “extant” as a noun.
Its the glue, man. Its the reason why you don’t fall apart right now, that your atoms don’t disassemble and fly off. I don’t know what that is but I know its there. I can’t say that morality is anything more than the consequentialism of behavior tendencies-- that morality is teleological but not normative, that it is neccesary that it happens but contingent to conceptualize why and how its happening through experience because behavior isn’t intentional, it is physical. Only an evaluation can have intention and intentions can’t be real where there are no real ends to existence.
This is one helluva mess you’ve gotten me into. Go find Dunamis.
I can’t even say its for “survivability.” That would imply that “not dying” is the end of the effects which constitute your existence. Certainly his is not the case, for your atoms had no idea you’d be shopping for jeans at the Wal-Mart later to be run over by a car in the parking lot. They didn’t see that coming, but neither were they moved by it.
All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated, is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.
detrop,
Perhaps I have misread some of your previous posts, but there always seemed with you, and your frequency of quoting Nietzcheian thought, that you were bereft of belief in anything beyond the rational process?
No?
Do you take a view that life’s purpose, (possibly fallacious premise), is towards something greater past the end of corporeal existence, or simply transference of genetic history?
If the former, then morality, (personally, I reject social morality), is a matter intensely patterned towards the “need” of reaching the end with a particular level of perception and moral correctness? Yes? (individual fitness)
If the latter, then morality truly is nothing more than a social mechanism to ensure survivability to maintain genetic continuation? Yes? (resource reciprocity)
Not attempting to judge or criticize, just wondering where your perspective acutally lies, it seems you lean different directions dependent upon the initial premise.
Are fatherhood and motherhood social institutions? Is a family a social institution? I think it is conspiracy, loosely defined, that creates the ‘need’ for social institutions; in the face of a pre-institution morality.
King Yuddhister says to his brother Bhim, “Every leaf on the tree that protects you is respectful.” If the leaves do not willfully protect you (because you have violated their morality and so lost their respect) and so you impose a tax and make the people pay you, it’s not a tree anymore, it’s a thatched hut; the whole structure is deluded.
One thing that concerns me is that, as i type, canadians and others are risking their lives in Kandahar (Gandahar? the birthplace of conspiracy;) and conspiracy is so common that noone talks meaningfully about conspiracy.
The soul… When you feel love, it comes from outside you, not from with -in like a hormone. If it came from with in, it’d be a trick of the mind responding to touch,… thus you’d be easily tricked into feeling love. Yet no matter what mood you are in, you feel the love someone gives you. This comes from where they touch you, and can not be faked by latax molds heated and doused in chemicals.
Conclusion… The soul is an energy independent of matter, but merely chanrges matter. Just like all religions have been saying. Except you can not see something like this because???
Imagine the power to ignore every word I said because they don’t like the word soul. If I judge you by your actions, then I’d say you are closed minded and bias. If you judge me by my actions, you’d say I’m a work in progress open to suggestion.
