von Rivers got me thinking about what objective morality is on Faust’s “Serious philosophy ,anyone?” thread.
I think that there is one ingredient missing from von’s idea of objective morality, that ingredient is that we want to be admired by others (and/or God?), not necessarily for reward but also because all human beings want to be admired (maybe too strong a word?) by other human beings even after death (when there is possibly no chance of personal gratification). No one wants to be remembered as a self centred twat. So this points to objective morality being a balance between self interest and greater good, so acts that promote both are the highest acts…even if those acts are based on false “knowledge” (we are not responsible for our knowledge other than the basic desire to wish to acquire it ) .
The human ability to imagine that which is not (eg, the future) frees us to become objectively moral.
Of course. We’re social creatures, and If I can observe that everyone around me hates me, then I’ll become inclined to hate myself----or else to try to hate others. And both of those outcomes are bad for the kind of creature that I am, namely, a social one. The same thing holds for posterity. If I know in advance that history is going to hate me, it could only be because I’ve already started to second-guess how I’ve spent my time.
In the grand scheme of things, there are things more important than money, hoes, and clothes—as Smears says. Everyone tries to capture what that is in a label… the ancients called it your psyche, others call it your soul, some people use metaphors of your heart, or whatever.
Man, Socrates had this great line in the Apology when he was arguing that a lesser man can never harm a better man. He said something about how a lesser man can steal your things, hurt your body, or kill you----but he can never touch your psyche. And in fact, when the lesser man does any of those things to you, he only harms himself—the most important part of himself: his psyche. (Or call it whatever you want). I was like, “ohh snap!”
I was interested in your concept that good morality is what serves the greater good and that the greater good benefits the self…I was just pointing out that I feel it may go deeper than that, that we actually care about what others think of us after our own death, where there is no benefit to us from their thoughts. Our ability to think ahead to a time beyond our own lives allows us to objectify morality, to put it beyond ourselves.
This could not be further from the truth. In fact it is the diametric opposite of the facts. Imagination of the future frees us FROM objective morality with is a stultifying and ossifying phenomenon of social stasis. All societies that are static and cold assert an objective and universal moral system and fail to change.
Historical and social change in fact denies the possibility of objective morality. And this has never been clearer than in the 20thC when social change was at its hottest (to use a Levi-Strauss term).
The claims that morality can be either universal or objective are hangovers from the distant past from times when social change was minimal - and those that peddled such concepts were making social change less possible, thus justifying their own twisted view.
Thankfully the secularisation of the western world has meant that social change has been freed up to some extent.
Hobbes is right. Another way to make his same point is to say there’s no point in seeking the admiration of future generations. Thanks to the march of progress, they’re all going to be taught that you, and everybody who lived in your time, was a backwards, horrible human being. Maybe because you ate meat, or burned fossil fuels, or fought in a war, or didn’t fight in a war when you should have, or whatever. Take it as a positive or a negative, the point is liberal progressive ideology annihilates any concept of posterity. Literally the only thing you can do to earn the respect of a future generation of progressives is to be more like them- that way they can flatter themselves by praising you for how 'ahead of your time (i.e., more like them) you are. This requires a great deal of luck or an even greater deal of force.
There is not a sane mind on this planet that believes he is the arbiter of moral truth. All sane minds are of the opinion that the opinions of others are important, therefore morality does not belong to the individual, it is something outside of him (like all truths) that he either tries to comply with or not.
All this shit about history changing values is a misconception…the fact that our values change does not imply that moral truths change.There have always been good and bad motives, and those motives are immutably either right or wrong…that’s where morality resides.
Is there any sane individual that thinks killing babies for fun can be the right moral action for the right person at the right time, seriously ?
“Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?” (Groucho) Marxist philosophy.
Ucci - conservatives change too, and judge past peoples by their own standards every bit as much as progressives. It’s a human thing, not a politically partisan thing.
Everyone cares what their peers and betters think, regardless of reward .Most people recognise when they are trying to do the right thing (even if that thing is actually evil), they want others of a similar bent to acknowledge their efforts even after death. Our imagination allows us to see a possible future where we still have some kind of existence in another’s mind . As I said, no sane man believes he is the cause of moral truth, he accepts that it is beyond himself.
I did not know that you were a psychologist with god-like qualities.
Quite a few insubstantiable claims there.
“All sane minds…” Wow - what do you mean sane?
History changing values is not “shit”. Values, moral or otherwise have always changed. All same people know that !! (joke)
When Crassus nailed some sense into Spartacus, and his followers he was complying with the moral values of his own day. A set of values by which 1800 years of Christianity demonstrated it shared in its continual support of the Slave Trade.
Maybe you are from a different planet, but we do things like that here.
There have been those that think killing babies is indeed fun. I’m puzzled to see what point you are making here.
I suppose you are going to pretend that anyone who does not follow your PERSONAL moral codes is , by definition, insane.
Don’t waste my time trying to support that claim.
“God-like qualities”…I don’t know what the fuck you’re getting at.
The more a mind reflects truth the saner it is.
Values change, morals do not…it has not been , and will never be,morally right to gain pleasure from harming the innocent. The morality of such an act lies in the motive, in this case “pleasure”.Just because the ancient Romans may have gained such pleasure does not imply it was right for them to do it.Same with slavery, it’s the motive behind slavery that decides whether it is right or wrong. In the ancient times it may well have been the case that slavery was the best option available (after a battle for instance where you couldn’t just release your enemy.)
Are you kidding - the motive justifies whether it is right or wrong - Did you really want to say that? It’s not much of a ethical position.
Aristotle used to say that war and slavery are naturally just; the strong must dominate the weak. For him that was a moral universal.
I imagine you do not agree.
So now I have you on one side of an argument and Aristotle on the other, both claiming that their moral position is unchangeable and just.
I can only conclude that I am right; that morality is fluid, changing, and historically contingent.
Motive and intention(ality) are progressively linear, but regressively not. Just a rude interject perhaps, but an existential jump would take care of any lapses of relevance, between these and other ideas, even if, socially determined.
Leibnitz was right: there is an intrinsically, metaphysically-deducible SOPHIA PERENNIS of “cosmic law” every wise person of every age has intuited in different exoteric forms… The TAO, Indo-European “RTA”/“ORDO”, the Heraclitean-Stoic-Christian “ETERNAL LAW OF THE ATEMPORAL LOGOS”… “GOD” is just a word for the underlying essence of the concept… The cartoonish “God” of theistic fideism is an encrustation and vulgarization overlaying a more paradoxical, onto-metaphysical substance… Meister Eckhart was a soldier of right, when talking about the GOD-ESSE beyond God… No one understood him…
The emotionally unwholesome, semantically-obsessed self-anointed murderers of God and demolishers of SATYA/RTA/RATIO/RITU/ARD(T)O/(H)ARMONIA/DHR-, DHARMA, etc. the ideational realm behind “God” (different words, same metaphysics of "super-human cosmic order/justice; esoterically, the causeless, but causality-interwoven arch-principle of transcendency stabilizing the galaxy against entropy – entropy as chaos popularized in exoteric religion in theologized presences of “daemonic” type), this mysteric ARX in later history assuming deific form, existing long before “theology”) these limp-spirited slayers of Divinity, as seen in the trendy throngs of today’s so-called “Atheism”, of such stupendous superficiality and emptiness of thought, as to be more void and nescient than the most inbred Missourian Baptist fundamentalist cult, I do declare pathetically clinically THEOPHOBIC rather than legitimate bearers of philosophy…
Herein lies the “metaphysical” deviation of modernity and moderns: this attempted assassination of the TAO, violently seizing the culture-sphere, in all ways “LEGISLATING LAWLESSNESS”, with our now JUDICIALLY-DICTATED schizophrenic, half-Gnostic-Dualist-occult, half-Thrasymachian-Stirnerian-Nietzschean anomie of the heart/intellect, the self-dissociation of the LOGOS as axial ordering principle of life and conduct: the modern moral deadness or moral schizophrenia sucking humankind into the nothingness of pre-historic semi-apedom…
