Euthyphro's Dilemma (for atheists)

[Chriliman]

Could be. Still thinking about this (and what the right test is for determining if murder is purple or not).

Either way, I do think its good to maintain the magic fiction that acts are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad in real life. We have strong a public order interest in this. But on the philosophy pages, anything goes.

It can still work if we say the act itself isn’t intrinsically good or bad, it’s the person doing the act that’s intrinsically good or bad. You said it yourself, we can find goodness and badness within ourselves when doing things, therefore we don’t have to think it’s in the things outside ourselves. This can also support objective morality, since we exist in objective reality like things do.

 

[durangodawood]

It can still work if we say the act itself isn’t intrinsically good or bad, it’s the person doing the act that’s intrinsically good or bad. You said it yourself, we can find goodness and badness within ourselves when doing things, therefore we don’t have to think it’s in the things outside ourselves. This can also support objective morality, since we exist in objective reality like things do.

That has 2 problems:

1. Its just as false as saying an action is intrinsically bad. Goodness and badness are judgements. They are states of regard that live in the judging subject, not in the object, action, or person being judged.

2. We highly value the potential for change of character in a person. This should really resonate for you as a Christian. I think its important to reserve the notion of intrinsic badness (even though its a fiction strictly speaking) for people who seem utterly irredeemable, and not just everyone who does a bad act.

 

[Chriliman]

That has 2 problems:

1. Its just as false as saying an action is intrinsically bad. Goodness and badness are judgements. They are states of regard that live in the judging subject, not in the object, action, or person being judged.

2. We highly value the potential for change of character in a person. This should really resonate for you as a Christian. I think its important to reserve the notion of intrinsic badness (even though its a fiction strictly speaking) for people who seem utterly irredeemable, and not just everyone who does a bad act.

If you feel good or bad about something, that feeling is intrinsic to you. Or if you’re judging something, the goodness or badness of the judgment is intrinsic to you. You don’t agree?

 

[Moral Orel]

Could be. Still thinking about this (and what the right test is for determining if murder is purple or not).

You can always go the "its neither true nor false" route. I started there, and semantically I think it works. Basically, saying that a thing has a property it can't even have is sort of like being "not even wrong". To be honest, it just caused more confusion, so I embraced the nihilist in me and just started saying moral statements are false.

Either way, I do think its good to maintain the magic fiction that acts are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad in real life. We have strong a public order interest in this. But on the philosophy pages, anything goes.

I don't think it really matters. Who thinks about the nature of morality, really? Most folks just want to be decent because we all like being liked. Folks who just really want to "do evil" are only going to be deterred by consequences anyways.

 

[Chriliman]

You can always go the "its neither true nor false" route. I started there, and semantically I think it works. Basically, saying that a thing has a property it can't even have is sort of like being "not even wrong". To be honest, it just caused more confusion, so I embraced the nihilist in me and just started saying moral statements are false.

I don't think it really matters. Who thinks about the nature of morality, really? Most folks just want to be decent because we all like being liked. Folks who just really want to "do evil" are only going to be deterred by consequences anyways.

I see 3 scenarios if we apply this thinking to society as a whole:

1. Society improves as a result, maybe no judgement allows people to more fully explore their desires and figure out what they truly want(but at what expense?).

2. Society crumbles because no one(except the victims) cares if people are hurt in any way and anarchy ensues.

3. Society stays the same, which would imply this understanding is either false, or at least doesn't matter.

Scenarios 1 and 2 would prove this thinking would have an objective effect on society, which would call into question the entire idea. Though if 1 is true, then it may not be worth questioning, unless the price is too high, but if 2 is true, then definitely worth questioning the entire idea.

Scenario 3 would prove it doesn't matter if everyone believes their actions are actually right or wrong because society remains the same, regardless.

 

[Moral Orel]

I see 3 scenarios if we apply this thinking to society as a whole:

1. Society improves as a result, maybe no judgement allows people to more fully explore their desires and figure out what they truly want(but at what expense?).

2. Society crumbles because no one(except the victims) cares if people are hurt in any way and anarchy ensues.

3. Society stays the same, which would imply this understanding is either false, or at least doesn't matter.

Scenarios 1 and 2 would prove this thinking would have an objective effect on society, which would call into question the entire idea. Though if 1 is true, then it may not be worth questioning, unless the price is too high, but if 2 is true, then definitely worth questioning the entire idea.

Scenario 3 would prove it doesn't matter if everyone believes their actions are actually right or wrong because society remains the same, regardless.

It's number 3. See, morality is one big appeal to emotion fallacy where we think just because we like something, then that something is good. If we find out that something is not in fact good, that ain't gonna make us not like it. We're still going to promote the things we like and prevent the things we don't like.

And we don't like it when other folk feel bad (thanks, empathy). Even selfishly, we don't like what other folk do to us when we make them feel bad. That's all the motivation needed for us to keep cooperating. Doesn't matter if those feelings are rational or not.

 

[jayem]

I haven’t read all 160+ posts. This may have been mentioned. As a naturalist, I see morality as a combination of instinct and learning. What we call moral behavior is only relevant to a social species. Which applies to us. Homo sapiens evolved from hominins living in smallish family groups and tribes. Those groups having members who instinctively refrained from wantonly attacking and killing each other; cooperated in finding and sharing food; caring for and protecting the young; supporting the old, injured, and sick as best they could; and helping to defend the tribe from other hostile groups would be more likely to thrive, reproduce, and increase their numbers. Thus, these pro-social instincts are favored by natural selection. And given that Homo sapiens have big brains that can form cultures, these instincts can be reinforced. Which is where learning and religion comes in. We create legends, beliefs, and rituals to strengthen tribal cohesion and promote pro-social behavior. Unfortunately, not all of us are moral to the same degree. Some of us are anti-social and lack moral instincts. But at the most fundamental level, morality is biological. It’s grounded in how evolution wired our brains.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[durangodawood]

If you feel good or bad about something, that feeling is intrinsic to you. Or if you’re judging something, the goodness or badness of the judgment is intrinsic to you. You don’t agree?

I think judgements are too much an act we do to be considered "intrinsic". Doesnt seem to fit the definition of the word.

Why are you trying to salvage the word "intrinsic" anyway?

 

[Chriliman]

I think judgements are too much an act we do to be considered "intrinsic". Doesnt seem to fit the definition of the word.

Why are you trying to salvage the word "intrinsic" anyway?

I'm just trying to find a way to describe how I understand goodness/badness, pleasure/harm as core to our being and therefore objective. So like when someone harms someone else for purely selfish reasons(not trying to help them in anyway), we can say the harm inflicted on the victim is like a universal or objective harm that anyone with sound senses would feel. Its hard to describe, but something that we instinctively know, or at least learn, is there.

 

[Chriliman]

I haven’t read all 160+ posts. This may have been mentioned. As a naturalist, I see morality as a combination of instinct and learning. What we call moral behavior is only relevant to a social species. Which applies to us. Homo sapiens evolved from hominins living in smallish family groups and tribes. Those groups having members who instinctively refrained from wantonly attacking and killing each other; cooperated in finding and sharing food; caring for and protecting the young; supporting the old, injured, and sick as best they could; and helping to defend the tribe from other hostile groups would be more likely to thrive, reproduce, and increase their numbers. Thus, these pro-social instincts are favored by natural selection. And given that Homo sapiens have big brains that can form cultures, these instincts can be reinforced. Which is where learning and religion comes in. We create legends, beliefs, and rituals to strengthen tribal cohesion and promote pro-social behavior. Unfortunately, not all of us are moral to the same degree. Some of us are anti-social and lack moral instincts. But at the most fundamental level, morality is biological. It’s grounded in how evolution wired our brains.

Sorry for the long post.

Nice, informative description! So to me, what you're describing sounds like objective morality. Morality that depends on the objective existence of social species.

 

[jayem]

Nice, informative description! So to me, what you're describing sounds like objective morality. Morality that depends on the objective existence of social species.

If we were a solitary species—like moose, or polar bears, or giant panda, then morality wouldn’t exist. There’d be no need for a complex moral system if men and women were loners who hooked up only for mating, and then went their separate ways. But there also wouldn’t be a civilization.

 

[zippy2006]

If goodness is an intrinsic property of anything, lets see it! But who can find "it" in the thing or in the action? Its a ghost chase.

By contrast when we understand goodness or badness as strictly our regard (or even a proposed divine being's regard) for a thing or act, it all makes sense. There's no ghost that eludes every angle of inspection. Instead, most of us find right away a feeling or a judgement in ourselves.

I think Chriliman is moving in the right direction, and we could always go back to <this post>.

A good cow is one that nourishes itself, reproduces, cares for its young, etc. Hence when the hungry cow eats grass it is performing a good act. This is in no way limited to "our regard."

But I do think there's some sense in pretending that goodness is intrinsic. Some people, for whatever reason (mainly being young and unwise), fail to hold the sorts of regards we need people hold for a functioning society. So theres great social-control benefit to locating "good" and "bad" in the things and acts of the world.

This gets at a fundamental weakness in your view. A regard, judgment, or value, is itself an act. Here you allude to the fact that some "regards" undermine society. As long as we take the persistence of society to be good, such a "regard" will be bad, and that too will not be limited to subjectivism, for the existence of the society is a supra-mental reality.

 

[durangodawood]

....A good cow is one that nourishes itself, reproduces, cares for its young, etc. Hence when the hungry cow eats grass it is performing a good act. This is in no way limited to "our regard."....

There's no "good" located in the cow no matter how much tasty milk it makes. If Im wrong, then please find this "good" it and show it. So far youve only shown me a cow eating grass, caring for young, etc.

"Good" here is entirely a judgement that happens in our own heads.

I do think Aquinas accords perfectly with my notion of natural origin of morality. "Good is that which all things seek after". We call things "good" (or right) when they support the expression of values natural to us as a species. (I call this "my notion" because I came up with all by myself, just like lots of other people did.)

 

[Astrid]

Nice, informative description! So to me, what you're describing sounds like objective morality. Morality that depends on the objective existence of social species.

Maybe " empirically derived".

" objective" always seems to mean its from a "god".

 

[zippy2006]

There's no "good" located in the cow no matter how much tasty milk it makes. If Im wrong, then please find this "good" it and show it. So far youve only shown me a cow eating grass, caring for young, etc.

A cow that eats grass has something within it that a cow that eats rocks does not have, namely a rightly ordered appetite. Based on this real property, the first cow is good in a way that the second is not. Are you honesty attempting to claim that those two cows are not objectively different?

"Good" here is entirely a judgement that happens in our own heads.

You're just making strange assertions without any rationale. The judgment that one cow eats grass and another eats rocks is not something that occurs entirely in our own heads. Cows, rocks, and eating are objective things in the world that our "heads" perceive.

I do think Aquinas accords perfectly with my notion of natural origin of morality. "Good is that which all things seek after". We call things "good" (or right) when they support the expression of values natural to us as a species. (I call this "my notion" because I came up with all by myself, just like lots of other people did.)

Then you are contradicting yourself, because that which is natural to a species is not something that exists "entirely in our own heads." All the "heads" could cease to exist and grass-eating cows would still fare better than rock-eating cows.

 

[Hans Blaster]

All the "heads" could cease to exist and grass-eating cows would still fare better than rock-eating cows.

This conversation is getting weird.

Though oddly it suggests a solution...

Since evolution would weed out a population of cows that preferred to eat rocks, it would similarly weed out a cooperative species that didn't develop the capacity for making rules. Perhaps we could call this "morals".

 

[durangodawood]

....You're just making strange assertions without any rationale. The judgment that one cow eats grass and another eats rocks is not something that occurs entirely in our own heads. Cows, rocks, and eating are objective things in the world that our "heads" perceive.

The cow and rocks and grass are objectively real.

"Good" is a judgement made by a human mind about a thing or event. The object of judgement, of course, can be objectively real.

(Are you talking about the morally "good"? Or did we move on to some other meaning of "good" while I wasnt looking.)

 

[zippy2006]

This conversation is getting weird.

Though oddly it suggests a solution...

Since evolution would weed out a population of cows that preferred to eat rocks, it would similarly weed out a cooperative species that didn't develop the capacity for making rules. Perhaps we could call this "morals".

I think many people do call that morals, but in a descriptive way rather than in a prescriptive way. That is, as soon as someone attributes morals to evolution, they are at the same time free to act immorally (since they are not beholden to evolution vis-a-vis their conscious decision making).

But I don't want to get too off topic. We have other threads about objective morality.

 

[zippy2006]

The cow and rocks and grass are objectively real.

"Good" is a judgement made by a human mind about a thing or event. The object of judgement, of course, can be objectively real.

Okay. In #173 you opposed my claim that the hungry cow eating grass is performing a good act. In #175 I brought in rocks to explain why one cow is good and another is bad. Do you have a response to #175?

(Are you talking about the morally "good"? Or did we move on to some other meaning of "good" while I wasnt looking.)

After noticing that you have been misunderstanding the concepts of 'good' and 'bad', I reset the conversation by referencing a quote from Aquinas from a different thread. I didn't expect you to misunderstand those concepts so definitively that you would oppose the idea that it is good for a cow to eat grass. Most people would have distinguished moral goodness from animal goodness rather than oppose animal goodness.

Feel free to retrace your steps and try a different route.

 

[durangodawood]

Okay. In #173 you opposed my claim that the hungry cow eating grass is performing a good act. In #175 I brought in rocks to explain why one cow is good and another is bad. Do you have a response to #175?

Tasty grass is what Id call instrumentally good for the cow. Its what works. And its basically objective.

Does that tell the whole story about whats morally good? Or is morally good something else?