Modern secular morality and it's inability to be authoritative

[Bradskii]

A bear can come up and attack me in a forest, killing me brutally, but I wouldn't attribute his action as immoral. But if a human did the same, would it still be immoral? If so, why is that? What makes the bear's motive or lack of motive any different than my fellow man?

One is an intention to hurt. The bear has no empathy. It sees food. The person killing you is presumably doing It with forethought and malice. As you suggested, motive is critically important. Not the only consideration, but still important.

I think you knew that anyway...

 

[Bradskii]

Oh ok so I suppose ignoring it is the solution.

Nobody is ignoring it. A couple of us, so far, are disagreeing with it. There'll be more along later.

 

[Jonaitis]

One is an intention to hurt. The bear has no empathy. It sees food. The person killing you is presumably doing It with forethought and malice. As you suggested, motive is critically important. Not the only consideration, but still important.

I think you knew that anyway...

So would you say that morality is largely dependent on a species' intelligence to comprehend such ill-motives? If so, at what level of intelligence is maliciousness, for example, from a species is to be considered immoral?

 

[Bradskii]

I want you to dispute my premise but all you've done is ask nebulous questions which require a foundation for their truthfulness or presuppose certain truths in order to establish them. No we can't agree bodily autonomy is important because you have no basis or reason for doing so but personal arbitrary preference. All of your claims are an appeal to emotion yet somehow I'm supposed to agree because 'stimulus feels bad'.

This is going to be a waste of time if you refuse to answer any questions. I'll be more than happy to answer any that you have, but you haven't made any yet. Just claims that you say, with hardly any debate whatsoever, are indisputable. Let me try again based on your last response.

I have a personal preference not to get smacked in the mouth. You bet it's a personal preference. So maybe we need to take it a step further back and ask 'Do you have a personal preference to not getting smacked in the mouth?'

And truthfully, there is only one honest answer to that. Which proves nothing. Which decides nothing. But it's the very first point inour search for common ground.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

Go read some Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. This isn't just a problem for secular people, and trying to imply it is is a symptom of the underlying problem.

Using inductive reasoning as if it's authoritative without any reason for doing so is a greater problem. Both of those whom you reference rely upon it in order to establish their position. It makes me wonder why Epistemology is rejected to the point where people don't even factor it in to their century defining premises.

 

[FireDragon76]

What does this say about morality?

If we define consciousness as that quality of subjective experiencing, then, this is without a doubt the ultimate authority on reason and belief. Should we, then, base principles that enhances the propensity of experiencing? I believe so, but to what extend and held by what boundary?

Have you ever heard of a autotelic personality? It is someone who does things, not for some future reward in mind, but for the things in themselves. What is the goal of experiencing? Experience. This is circular, but at the same time undeniably true. It may be that, perhaps, morality should be focused on the enhancement or fitness of experience for me and others? This leads us back to compassion as furthering and progressing the natural state of things. What if compassion enhances conscious experiencing? Then it would be synonymous with the experiencing itself, making compassion the principle and enhancement of experiencing. We should do those things that furthers one's proper experiencing, not deteriorates it.

This is closer to the truth though I'm not sure there is actually a "natural state of things" that is static as the ancients thought, and which is the ground of classical Christian metaphysics (Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato). I believe the universe is in a state of evolution at all levels, not just the gross material level. Not necessarily along Darwinian lines, but orthogenic lines more akin to what was articulated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin or Sri Aurobindo.

 

[Bradskii]

So would you say that morality is largely dependent on a species' intelligence to comprehend such ill-motives? If so, at what level of intelligence is maliciousness, for example, from a species is to be considered immoral?

I'm no expert on the motives of any other species as regards violence for the sake of violence (although our cousins the chimps seem a good bet for investigation). But motive is critical. If I hurt you, or attempt to hurt you for no good reason, then that motive is immoral.

And again, I'm slightly surprised at the question because I'm certain you knew the answer.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

This is going to be a waste of time if you refuse to answer any questions. I'll be more than happy to answer any that you have, but you haven't made any yet. Just claims that you say, with hardly any debate whatsoever, are indisputable. Let me try again based on your last response.

I have a personal preference not to get smacked in the mouth. You bet it's a personal preference. So maybe we need to take it a step further back and ask 'Do you have a personal preference to not getting smacked in the mouth?'

And truthfully, there is only one honest answer to that. Which proves nothing. Which decides nothing. But it's the very first point inour search for common ground.

You're joking right? you haven't answered a single one of my questions nor objected to my premises, yet you want to lead me along the rails of your worldview in order to establish a conclusion in concordance with it. The waste of time is on my end, assuming that for a single second you'd be able to dispense with your presuppositions in order to examine them. If it's personal preference then everything is arbitrary and "agreements upon behaviour =/= why I should follow them". I feel like I'm going insane. This entire line of reasoning you've concocted agrees with the OP, that you have no reason as to why your morals are true or authoritative.

 

[Jonaitis]

This is closer to the truth though I'm not sure there is actually a "natural state of things" that is static as the ancients thought, and which is the ground of classical Christian metaphysics (Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato). I believe the universe is in a state of evolution at all levels, not just the gross material level. Not necessarily along Darwinian lines, but orthogenic lines more akin to what was articulated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin or Sri Aurobindo.

I'm curious to know where the evolution is taking us? Is it a never-ending game of adaptation with no real completion? Sri Aurobindo affirms the idea of lila, that is, divine-play in creation. I agree with him on this, and so think that evolution at all levels isn't really achieving anything except expansion, and if so, then 'pious' autotelic living is the optimal way to live.

 

[FireDragon76]

Using inductive reasoning as if it's authoritative without any reason for doing so is a greater problem. Both of those whom you reference rely upon it in order to establish their position. It makes me wonder why Epistemology is rejected to the point where people don't even factor it in to their century defining premises.

Inductive reasoning allows us to flip a light switch and trust it will turn on, so I wouldn't dismiss it so casually. We sent people to the moon, after all, based on centuries of observations of the natural world. If induction were so unreliable, that shouldn't happen.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

Inductive reasoning allows us to flip a light switch and trust it will turn on, so I wouldn't dismiss it so casually. We sent people to the moon, after all, based on centuries of observations of the natural world. If induction were so unreliable, that shouldn't happen.

I don't dismiss it, in fact I have a reason as to why inductive reason IS (all [Edit: Christian] Theists do). Those who are divorced from such a worldview and cannot examine the future however do not.

 

[Jonaitis]

I'm no expert on the motives of any other species as regards violence for the sake of violence (although our cousins the chimps seem a good bet for investigation). But motive is critical. If I hurt you, or attempt to hurt you for no good reason, then that motive is immoral.

And again, I'm slightly surprised at the question because I'm certain you knew the answer.

I still want to ask, though.

If motive is chiefly important, where does that "good reason" behind it come from? By what or whose standard? I could create my own good reasons to harm you. Should there be correct judgement to properly inform our motives?

 

[Bradskii]

You're joking right? you haven't answered a single one of my questions nor objected to my premises, yet you want to lead me along the rails of your worldview in order to establish a conclusion in concordance with it. The waste of time is on my end, assuming that for a single second you'd be able to dispense with your presuppositions in order to examine them. If it's personal preference then everything is arbitrary and "agreements upon behaviour =/= why I should follow them". I feel like I'm going insane. This entire line of reasoning you've concocted agrees with the OP, that you have no reason as to why your morals are true or authoritative.

I'm in the process of objecting to your premises. What exactly do you want? 'I object to your premise' and that's it? Just...What? And I haven't made 'an entire line of reasoning.' I've just asked one simple, basic, uncontroversial question, based, as you say, on personal preference, in order to get to the very base line of common agreement.

I don't know how long you've been doing this, but debating anything at all is a complete wasteof time u til you work backwards from each individual claim to fins the first point at which you can agree on something. And my point is as basic as 'Do you prefer not to get smacked in the mouth'.

 

[Neutral Observer]

Oh ok so I suppose ignoring it is the solution.

I'm sorry, I don't see a problem that requires a solution. Morality is subjective, there's no problem there that needs solving.

You have no justification as to why your morals are correct and you haven't provided any.

Of course I have a justification for what I do and don't consider to be moral, "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" is a fairly common one. All that you're arguing is that there's no objective measure for morality, and in that sense you're absolutely right, there isn't. So what? We don't need one. We're perfectly capable of formulating our own. We've been doing it for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years now, and we seem to have it pretty much down pat. So much so that you don't even seem to realize that we're just making it up.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

I'm in the process of objecting to your premises. What exactly do you want? 'I object to your premise' and that's it? Just...What? And I haven't made 'an entire line of reasoning.' I've just asked one simple, basic, uncontroversial question, based, as you say, on personal preference, in order to get to the very base line of common agreement.

I don't know how long you've been doing this, but debating anything at all is a complete wasteof time u til you work backwards from each individual claim to fins the first point at which you can agree on something. And my point is as basic as 'Do you prefer not to get smacked in the mouth'.

And my premise is that arbitrary preferences have no basis for a universal morality, due to the fact that they're arbitrary. Made clear in the OP with the Roman example. When you object to a premise you provide reasons for doing so, not asking questions that the OP already refutes.

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm curious to know where the evolution is taking us? Is it a never-ending game of adaptation with no real completion? Sri Aurobindo affirms the idea of lila, that is, divine-play in creation. I agree with him on this, and so think that evolution at all levels isn't really achieving anything except expansion, and if so, then 'pious' autotelic living is the optimal way to live.

A super-personal intelligence or Supermind.

I think Plato and Jung were onto something, but perhaps miss the mark. Perhaps the eidetic Forms or archetypes are not the result of eternally pre-existant realities, but the result of novelty interacting with other fundamental drives of cosmogenesis, then there is a concrescence of the forms within deep consciousness.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

I'm sorry, I don't see a problem that requires a solution. Morality is subjective, there's no problem there that needs solving.



Of course I have a justification for what I do and don't consider to be moral, "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" is a fairly common one. All that you're arguing is that there's no objective measure for morality, and in that sense you're absolutely right, there isn't. So what? We don't need one. We're perfectly capable of formulating our own. We've been doing it for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years now, and we seem to have it pretty much down pat. So much so that you don't even seem to realize that we're just making it up.

I'm not only arguing that there's no objective measure for morality but also that whatever moral stance you take you're unable to condemn others if their moral stance opposes yours because you both share in the exact same reason as to why your morals are true. In your very post you've assumed that survival or age of a practise is somehow the measure for success (which refutes your entire comment that there's no ability to measure it), due to the fact we've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You've assumed this without a reason for being true. It's not just that you have no objective measures, it's that you can't establish a morality at all without assuming the truth of other morals.

 

[Bradskii]

You're joking right? you haven't answered a single one of my questions...

There have been exactly 2. The first as above: 'You're joking right?' And an earlier one: 'What's your reason for bodily autonomy being important?' which I have been trying to answer, although the answer is obvious. It's a personal preference. But it does go on from there in all sort of wonderful directions. But I need agreement that aspects of bodily autonomy are indeed preferences. Which everyone has. Trust me, I'm not the only guywho prefers not to get beaten up. Hence my question - which you seem determined not to answer.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

There have been exactly 2. The first as above: 'You're joking right?' And an earlier one: 'What's your reason for bodily autonomy being important?' which I have been trying to answer, although the answer is obvious. It's a personal preference. But it does go on from there in all sort of wonderful directions. But I need agreement that aspects of bodily autonomy are indeed preferences. Which everyone has. Trust me, I'm not the only guy who prefers not to get beaten up. Hence my question - which you seem determined not to answer.

I answered it here:

Nevertheless I'll answer your question. We are all made in the image of God, God has also individually established the criteria in which we are to treat one another, therefore we are all equal regarding our bodily autonomy and should respect one another in the following of our Christ. Bodily autonomy therefore is important to me because of the parameters in which our God (the source of all truth) has established.

Here's the other question in the same post.

What's your reason for bodily autonomy being important? because the stimulus which has no reason as to why it's authoritative says it's bad?

You responded sarcastically. I gave not only the initial answer I would give, that we're all made in the image of God, but also a further extrapolation for you.

 

[Bradskii]

And my premise is that arbitrary preferences have no basis for a universal morality, due to the fact that they're arbitrary. Made clear in the OP with the Roman example. When you object to a premise you provide reasons for doing so, not asking questions that the OP already refutes.

I haven't objected to it. I'm still searching for some common ground. Can you tell me if you have a preference to not get beaten up?