Morality is Non-Rational

Tree of Life said:

I'm simply saying that morals cannot be derived from rationality alone. I've not seen an answer to this one yet.

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So you're suggesting that we all begin with certain axioms and some of these axioms are moral axioms. Great. We are in agreement. Morality, then, is a starting assumption (axiom) and not derived from reason.

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The axioms are consciousness and their well-being. In other words, well-being is a requirement for its definition, though I suppose it depends on what you are pointing to when you refer to morality. You can either point to the axiom of well-being or you can point to the process of getting from that abstraction to answer questions that involve conscious entities. The latter is how you can answer moral questions, and yes, you can do so with pure reason, though ordinarily it is going to be an empirical project as opposed to a purely logical one.

Some things do follow logically from "is" statements, though. The philosopher John Searle points out that from the statement "Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars," it logically follows that "Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars." The act of promising by definition places the promiser under obligation.

I would rather say "the discovery of morality is non-rational"

Tree of Life said:

So Searle also assumes morality in order to prove it.

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If it were possible to do it any other way, people could insist that others be moral at all times - which is itself immoral.

Hi guys, just wondering (since the shadows on the wall of my cave aren't very clear), what do we mean by the term "morality?"

Are we simply talking about how we distinguish between good and evil, or is there more to it than that?

I understand we can know through our senses and/or our thoughts, but is there any other way that we can know?

I noticed two slightly (or not so slightly) different points that we are discussing,

'1. "Morality is non-rational."
Thoughts have no place in understanding morality.

'2. "Morality is not only rational."
Thoughts, senses, and experiences, plus ________ (fill in blank), contribute to our understanding of morality.

I'm not actually saying anything at this point, I'm just looking for clarification.

Tree of Life said:

I actually disagree with Searle. His argument goes:

1. Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars
2. Therefore Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars

There is a hidden premise. He's really saying:

1. Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars
2. Promises ought to be kept
3. Therefore Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars

So Searle also assumes morality in order to prove it.

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Searle hasn't assumed morality he's created it by the standard he presented. You haven't applied a hidden premise you've merely re-jigged the standard and by adding 'promises ought to be kept'. The whole standard above is created on an interactional relationship between Jones and Smith and for the relationship to stay conducive to a 'functional relationship' Jones understands that he needs to pay smith the five dollars. Jones has reason to pay back smith, although he may choose not to, thus potentially damaging the relationship with smith.

Tree of Life said:

I actually disagree with Searle. His argument goes:

1. Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars
2. Therefore Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars

There is a hidden premise. He's really saying:

1. Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars
2. Promises ought to be kept
3. Therefore Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars

So Searle also assumes morality in order to prove it.

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It's a tautology, actually. All promises are acts of placing oneself under (undertaking) an obligation to do the thing promised. If one has placed oneself under an obligation then, ceteris paribus, one is under an obligation. Searle's premises are not moral or evaluative but rather consist of empirical assumptions, tautologies, and descriptions of word usage.

Tree of Life said:

For me, there are two reasons to make this point.

1. It creates problems for rationalists.

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I would not identify with that label.

Tree of Life said:

2. It points toward the presence of God.

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A character in a book. A bit weak, that.

Tree of Life said:

Both morality and rationality are derived from the person of God.

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Religious handwaving. Your particular "God", of course.

Tree of Life said:

If people can see that morality is not derived from rationality then they are encouraged to find its source in something else.

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The false dichotomy. Very popular among religionists. Rationality can't explain it? Godidit.

Tree of Life said:

I don't intend to contend for this in this thread, but being forthright, that's my purpose in making the point.

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I figured that, and waited for this post.

Tree of Life said:

There are broader implications as well. In applied ethics, for instance, if my position is true then all arguments should be from ethical sentiments to other ethical sentiments.

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Why should I consider your position to be true? Is there any objective evidence for the existence of gods like that of the bible?

Tree of Life said:

We demonstrate that euthanasia is wrong, for instance, by identifying it with murder - which we already believe is wrong.

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Murder is unlawful killing.

Good gravy.

It is all rational.

dp

Tree of Life said:

No. "Seems" is not an argument. But it is worth taking account of. Any explanation of reality has to also explain how reality "seems" and why it "seems" that way.

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Sure - but it doesn´t "seem" to me the way it "seems" to you.

By "there" I don't necessarily mean something is there outside of the subject. I mean that morality is simply "there" - whether something objective or something within the subject.

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Thanks for the clarification. Nonetheless, your conclusion doesn´t follow. After all, you yourself have given some explanations how we create morality.
The fact that pure rationality alone isn´t sufficient to create moral concepts and stances (i.e. can´t brigde the is-ought gap) doesn´t mean "morality is simply there". At best, we can conclude that there is another ingredient in this process that leads to morality (an ingredient that might or might not be "simply there").

From my perspective it´s pretty simple: We would like the world to be an enjoyable place (and yes, this desire is probably simply there, and I don´t see much need to explain why we prefer joy over suffering), and that´s sufficient reason to think about what´s needed to make it such.
So what´s to be bridged is not an is-ought gap, but a want-ought gap - and rationality is a fine tool for that.

On another note, I sense you are equivocating "morality". Typically, "morality" is used for a certain set of moral stances, but here you suddenly switch to using it for some rather unspecific concept which I understand as something like "the will to consider things in terms of oughts).

Tree of Life said:

Point being, you cannot logically derive an "ought" from an "is".

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How do you feel about hypothetical imperatives? E.g. if a surgeon wants her patient to survive surgery, he ought to sterilize his instruments.

P1. The surgeon wants her patient to survive the procedure.
P2. Patients who are operated on with dirty instruments have a lower chance of surviving surgical procedures.

C. The surgeon ought to sterilize her instruments.

Seems to me that that derives an ought from an is.

poolerboy0077 said:

Sure you can. It's done all the time. This is-ought "problem" is quite frankly just bad philosophy.

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Agreed. It's amazing to me how many people take David Hume's ideas on this issue as some kind of religious dogma. It is just taken for granted that Hume had settled the issue for all time.

I'll agree with Hume that certain forms of argumentation are unlikely to be successful, such as a formal deductive argument. However, this hardly exhausts the sort of arguments possible in philosophy. It is possible to examine the facts of reality that give rise to oughts, and to see how values are a species of fact. There is a good discussion of this in Rasmussen and Den Uyl's book Liberty and Nature.

Certainly, anyone who thinks that the is-ness of God leads to ought-ness of morality should be open to that possibility.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Gene2memE said:

[FONT=&quot]Morality is about the welfare and outcomes of the actions of thinking beings. We are most strongly associated with our own in-groups (cultural, religious, professional, familial, social ect), so we are most concerned with their welfare.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Morality has a clear basis in nature. All it really requires is empathy: we understand that we don’t like certain things to happen to us and have the ability to realise that these same behaviours and outcomes, generally speaking, are equally disliked by others.[/FONT]

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Actually, empathy is not a good basis for morality; because it tries to ground morality in an inherently fickle and unstable thing - human feelings. Doing that is building on sand.

Tree of Life said:

A moral assumption would be something like: "we ought to treat others like we would want to be treated." I think that this is a fantastic moral assumption. We can certainly reason from moral assumptions like this. This assumption, combined with reason, can tell us a great many things about what we should or should not do.

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That only works with people who are reasonable and sociable. The drunk fan of punk rock wants to be subjected to awful music, drunkenness and foul language.....so he treats his neighbour the same way (despite the fact that the neighbour prefer Bach, sobriety and civility).

Making an idol of human desires is not a sound basis for morality; as those desires can vary greatly from the base to the refined.

The truth is, when it comes down to it, that a moral society can only be created by moral people; and if those people try to include immoral people in that society the fabric of the society will rot. A society that favours peace, stability, continuity, cohesion, and knowledge, requires people who are peaceful, stable, patient, far-sighted, harmonious and reasonable. Those who are turbulent, unstable, impatient, short-sighted, dischordant and unreasonable can have no place in it except the place of a cancer cell in a healthy body.

poolerboy0077 said:

The axioms are consciousness and their well-being. In other words, well-being is a requirement for its definition, though I suppose it depends on what you are pointing to when you refer to morality. You can either point to the axiom of well-being or you can point to the process of getting from that abstraction to answer questions that involve conscious entities...

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"Well-being" seems like an inherently subjective criterion. And within it lies some very authoritarian tendencies.

Some things do follow logically from "is" statements, though. The philosopher John Searle points out that from the statement "Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars," it logically follows that "Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars." The act of promising by definition places the promiser under obligation.

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That sounds a bit like Kant. And it sounds like a bunch of nonsense, too. The "obligation" is hollow, because there's always the non-rational assumption that abstract obligations are worth caring about.

Inkfingers said:

That only works with people who are reasonable and sociable. The drunk fan of punk rock wants to be subjected to awful music, drunkenness and foul language.....so he treats his neighbour the same way (despite the fact that the neighbour prefer Bach, sobriety and civility).

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"Awful", in this context is subjective but you're assuming, implicitly, that a fan of punk rock music (even a drunk one) would just want to impose his music on others and his own attitudes on others. This is just a wholly unevidenced assertion born from outdated and hilarious stereotypes.

Liking certain things does not mean you think that everyone else should be subjected to those things on the basis that you like them.

Skavau said:

"Awful", in this context is subjective but you're assuming, implicitly, that a fan of punk rock music (even a drunk one) would just want to impose his music on others and his own attitudes on others. This is just a wholly unevidenced assertion born from outdated and hilarious stereotypes.

Liking certain things does not mean you think that everyone else should be subjected to those things on the basis that you like them.

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I am pointing out the weakness of the "if I want it I should give the same to others" argument (known as "do as you would be done by". It requires people be sociable and reasonable, and so is not an absolute in itself.

Also, the existence of exceptions to the sterotype does in no way invalidate it. But because it challenges your own ideological preferences you are being defensive.

The sober and civil fan of Bach makes a better neighbour than the drunk and crude fan of punk. And the nature of Bach and Punk makes each more likely to be the music choice of the sober/civil and drunk/crude person respectively. Rare exceptions are no challenge to that truth.

Inkfingers said:

I am pointing out the weakness of the "if I want it I should give the same to others" argument (known as "do as you would be done by". It requires people be sociable and reasonable, and so is not an absolute in itself.

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Which depends on how you interpret that. I would not want imposed on me noise pollution (when I'm trying to sleep) nor would I want to hear music or sounds continuously that I don't like. Someone who likes Punk is likely to be able to appreciate that assertion.

Also, the existence of exceptions to the sterotype does in no way invalidate it. But because it challenges your own ideological preferences you are being defensive.

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Stereotypes are always based in an element of truth but the idea that the majority of punk rockers are drunks who would play loud music constantly is laughable.

The sober and civil fan of Bach makes a better neighbour than the drunk and crude fan of punk.

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I would think the "drunk" and "crude" aspects of this make the person a better neighbour rather than their music listening habits.

And the nature of Bach and Punk makes each more likely to be the music choice of the sober/civil and drunk/crude person respectively. Rare exceptions are no challenge to that truth.

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What about Symphonic Metal?

Inkfingers said:

The truth is, when it comes down to it, that a moral society can only be created by moral people; and if those people try to include immoral people in that society the fabric of the society will rot. A society that favours peace, stability, continuity, cohesion, and knowledge, requires people who are peaceful, stable, patient, far-sighted, harmonious and reasonable. Those who are turbulent, unstable, impatient, short-sighted, dischordant and unreasonable can have no place in it except the place of a cancer cell in a healthy body.

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I'm sorry I can not buy into this statement.

Particularly since it seems to be saying:

"If somebody does not fit into social norms then that person is cancerous, and therefore should be executed".

Also there are thousands of mitigating circumstances where people may appear to be "turbulent, unstable, impatient, short-sighted, dischordant and unreasonable" which has nothing to do with their moral compass.

Turbulent: Somebody runs a stop sign and almost hits your child who was crossing the street, and you yell at the driver to pay attention to what he is doing. You are yelling, that is turbulent.

Unstable: Your best friend has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Impatient: You have been patiently waiting at an emergency ward for the last four hours and have still not been seen by a physician.

Short-sighted: I should fill up my gas tank on the way to work, but I'm running late, so I decide to fill it up later. But after work I forget, and run out of gas a kilometer away from home (or the nearest gas station).

Dischordant: Just don't listen to me singing in the shower. Or not to say something when a boundary has been over-stepped.

Unreasonable: So a first year course in philosophy should fix that: but wait, you have to finish Highschool first.