Morality is Non-Rational

[poolerboy0077]

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

It shouldn't upon careful reflection. For instance, just as a thought experiment, imagine the worst possible misery for everyone. This, by definition, is "bad" -- if the word bad means anything at all, in any objective sense, it is this. Now, any move away from this space is an improvement. It's really a navigation problem. Moving away from misery is not subjective. It is an empirical endeavor. Granted, some questions will be difficult, and some perhaps unobtainable, but there is nothing inherently subjective about this.

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.

Let's not fall into a fallacy of composition. That some elements may be non-rational does not make reason or some logical statements beyond the realm of rationality. That would be akin to saying that conclusions don't really follow from premises, since the first requirement necessitates a value of thinking and connecting. This practice is quickly becoming absurdly relativistic.

 

[loveofourlord]

On piracy it could be seen if you look this way.

Depriving people of things that belong to them is wrong.
Stealing actual things deprives them of something that belongs to them.
if I download a movie I wouldn't see or pay money for without internet isn't depriving anyone of anything, as they would never have gotten anyhthing for it from me.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

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

1. It creates problems for rationalists.

Does it though? Or are you just setting up a strawman?

I don't think a rationalist is someone who says that they live by a system which is devoid of axiomatic truths.

Everyone relies on a set of axioms at some base level (except perhaps an extreme agnostic). A rationalist would then rationally proceed from the smallest set of axiomatic assumptions possible. And, as others have said here, many of those axioms are normative.

My question is, "So what?" I don't see how it impedes the idea of morality being useful, justifiable or objective.

2. It points toward the presence of God. Both morality and rationality are derived from the person of God. If people can see that morality is not derived from rationality then they are encouraged to find its source in something else.

I don't see how it follows.

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

I don't see how euthanasia and murder are related ethically.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

We all know that rain it wet, but when should the butterfly flap its wings? Or we all know that gravity arrtacts, but try solving the three body problem of interacting planets. We all know that health is preferable, but why are there still arguments about whether or not to lie?

 

[yesyoushould]

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




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).

What do you believe quatona?

 

[yesyoushould]

We all know that rain it wet, but when should the butterfly flap its wings? Or we all know that gravity arrtacts, but try solving the three body problem of interacting planets. We all know that health is preferable, but why are there still arguments about whether or not to lie?

God isn't the author of confusion.

 

[quatona]

What do you believe quatona?

About what?

 

[yesyoushould]

About what?

Do you have a belief?

Rainbows, clothes, friends, family?

 

[quatona]

Do you have a belief?

Why sure, I hold beliefs.

Rainbows, clothes, friends, family?

Rainbows look beautiful.
Clothes are unimportant.
You can have only a few friends.
Family is overrated.

I feel honoured by your interest in my beliefs regarding these things. but I have no idea what this has to do with the topic of this thread or my post you responded to first. Would you like to clarify?

 

[yesyoushould]

Why sure, I hold beliefs.


Rainbows look beautiful.
Clothes are unimportant.
You can have only a few friends.
Family is overrated.

I feel honoured by your interest in my beliefs regarding these things. but I have no idea what this has to do with the topic of this thread or my post you responded to first. Would you like to clarify?

Im just interested in you.

What questions do you have about my post?

 

[quatona]

dp

 

[quatona]

Im just interested in you.

What questions do you have about my post?

Well, I written a long post about how I belief we form our moral ideas, and you responded by asking me what beliefs I hold.
To me that looks like a completely unrelated and off-topic question (apart from the fact that this post already had described some of my beliefs), but I might be missing something .
So my question was and still is: What´s the connection between my post and your following question (assuming your intention was not to derail the thread or distract from what was being discussed)?

 

[yesyoushould]

Well, I written a long post about how I belief we form our moral ideas, and you responded by asking me what beliefs I hold.
To me that looks like a completely unrelated and off-topic question (apart from the fact that this post already had described some of my beliefs), but I might be missing something .
So my question was and still is: What´s the connection between my post and your following question (assuming your intention was not to derail the thread or distract from what was being discussed)?

Ok. You said that you form your own moral ideas. I suppose I was just curious what those are.

I think we can all get along by helping one another.
We all have something to offer. One way or another.

I suppose I'm against people stealing from each other and harming others, in any way. Even offending one another. I think we can all get along and trust that it will all be alright.

Im against people doing without. I mean, we all deserve to survive.
A paper god(money) should not be valued over human life.

 

[quatona]

Ok. You said that you form your own moral ideas. I suppose I was just curious what those are.

That would be a bit too long to explain here, I guess.

My ethics/morality is a bit different than the classical traditional philosophies that developed under the reign of Abrahamic religions.

Firstly, I don´t focus so much on what not to do, but rather on the question: How can I enrich the lives of the people around me.
Secondly, I don´t believe in the dichotomy of altruism vs. egoism. It actually seems to create the very problems it´s meant to solve.
Thirdly, I believe that the important things in life aren´t zero sum games. They are there in abundance, and sharing them makes them grow.
Fourthly, I believe that whatever people say to each other can be reduced to "please" and "thank you".

Just to give you an idea.

I think we can all get along by helping one another.
We all have something to offer. One way or another.

Of course.

I suppose I'm against people stealing from each other and harming others, in any way.

I guess everyone is against stealing (since the very definition of "stealing" is the immoral/illegal taking of something). The question in which people disagree, however, is: "What constitutes stealing?"
Personally, I believe all "property" is always the result of theft. Of course, the society I live in sees that differently.

Even offending one another.

In regards to "offenses": Whether someone is offended is not within my power. It´s their making. I can´t take responsibility for other persons´emotion, and I don´t expect them to take responsibility for mine.
No matter what I do, someone can and will be offended. So "not offending anyone" is not a well-formed goal, for me.
Not taking offense, however, is.

I think we can all get along and trust that it will all be alright.

The question is: How do we get there?

Im against people doing without.

Without what?

I mean, we all deserve to survive.

In my moral philosophy, nobody deserves anything. It´s all about what we are willing to give and willing to take.

A paper god(money) should not be valued over human life.

I have problems with loaded language like "money=paper god", sorry.
Anyway - in my worldview wealth and property aren´t of great importance.
OTOH, how much I value "human life" isn´t of great relevance to me because I have never found myself in situation where taking a human even appeared to be an option to me, and, actually, I can´t think of any.
As I said, I am more concerned with making life more enjoyable, creative and beautiful, so that people encounter it as worth living.

 

[Received]

Some, in defense of a rationalistic approach to morality, have tried to suggest that morality comes from our goals and can be rationally derived from our goals. In other words, if we want to live a long life then we ought to behave in a certain way. The imperatives are authoritative because they're based on desires and goals that we actually hold. We can then use reason to determine how to best meet these goals. And this becomes our morality.

But this is an unsatisfying account. As Wittgenstein noted in his famous lecture on ethics, some "ought" claims are clearly hypothetically imperative. If I notice that you're a horrible tennis player and I say: "you really ought to practice more often", you can easily escape the imperative statement by saying: "but I don't really care about being a better tennis player." But this does not seem to be the case with moral claims. If you're a liar and I say: "you really ought to tell the truth" you cannot escape the imperative by saying: "but I don't really care about being a moral person!" In the second scenario it stills seems that you ought to care about being a moral person. The imperative still seems authoritative in spite of your goals (or lack-thereof).

"Being a moral person" always invites the question of "whose morality?" which in turn goes back to goals: morality is constituted by goals (so go the Virtue Ethicists, with whom I'm crunk), so to say that a person ought to be moral works only if he agrees with your conception of the good, your goal.

So I would say that when speaking of virtue ethics, we can circumvent the problem of rationality (including the is/ought distinction) and morality inherent to deontology and consequentialism. To be rational in a moral or ethical sense always implies some type of conception of the good, which actualizes as a goal, and rationality here shows itself by arguing how this good or goal practically takes place in the world out there and in such-and-such person who inhabits this world.

 

[Helix Flux]

Morally, man was created in righteousness and perfect innocence, a reflection of God’s holiness. God saw all He had made (mankind included) and called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Our conscience or “moral compass” is a vestige of that original state. Whenever someone writes a law, recoils from evil, praises good behavior, or feels guilty, he is confirming the fact that we are made in God’s own image.

Mentally, man was created as a rational, volitional agent. In other words, man can reason and man can choose. This is a reflection of God’s intellect and freedom. Anytime someone invents a machine, writes a book, paints a landscape, enjoys a symphony, calculates a sum, or names a pet, he or she is proclaiming the fact that we are made in God’s image.

Part of being made in God’s image is that Adam had the capacity to make free choices. Although he was given a righteous nature, Adam made an evil choice to rebel against his Creator. In so doing, Adam marred the image of God within himself, and he passed that damaged likeness on to all his descendants (Romans 5:12). Today, we still bear the image of God (James 3:9), but we also bear the scars of sin. Mentally, morally, socially, and physically, we show the effects of sin.

The good news is that when God redeems an individual, He begins to restore the original image of God, creating a “new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). That redemption is only available by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior from the sin that separates us from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Through Christ, we are made new creations in the likeness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17).

 

[GrowingSmaller]

People are programmable, so morally they are plastic. There are all sorts of moral opinions.

The function of morality is to assist the genes.

This does not reduce "dignity", or an innate sense of the value of ones life, to rubble. Likewise, the functionality of the legs and arms does not make them spurious, but more valuable to the organism.

Sayings like "theft is wrong" are socially produced and ought not be seen as foundational to ethics. Oughts have roots in our psycholigy, not sociology.

What is foundational to ethics is the value of a life, stemming from complex psychology including emotional awareness, decision making skills etc. This in turn is an adaptation, but makes life sacred in the sense that sentience ought to be treated differently than stones and iron, water and clouds - which have no "inante value", no feelings, or sense of self worth etc...


"Rational attraction to being" is my ethical formula - using our theoretical and practical sense to make life worthwhile - and enjoy being - in a way that sustains the life of the person and species.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I think that emotions are part of the key to morality, but rather than relating to them as "non rational" I think there can be a rationality to emotion.

I view emotions or feelings as "posits" by our subconsicous, which give a kind of lived value to the situation we face. For instance being in love places value on ones beloved, and living in fear a negative value on the fearsome.

Ultimately they are part of motivation and "taxis" or orientation, movement and decision making in our environment.

Obviously emotions are not randomly assigned, there is some logic to them. So our resonse ought to be thoughtful and careful, which attitudes are components of rationality. The fact that there can be emotional disorders, like an irrational fear of chairs (etc) indicates that emotion and reason are not "non overlapping magisteria" (to borrow a phrase from the religion vs science debate), but together involved in cognitive life. In fact the deviant case implies something about the usual...

Saying "its not a math formula, or abstract logic" is a big diversion. Theres more to rationality than number crunching with symbols etc and truth values. There are other values, as part of a normal life, like I hinted at above.

Also, its not just about emotions - which may have been Hume's mistake. They form part of a life world, which is our major concern, internal and external aspects combined in one whole.

 

[Eudaimonist]

The function of morality is to assist the genes.

I would say that the function of morality is to assist one's life. Genes may be involved in life, but that doesn't mean that genes are the point.

For instance, while we may have the capacity to reproduce, it would be odd to suggest that it is immoral not to have as many children as one can.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I would say that the function of morality is to assist one's life. Genes may be involved in life, but that doesn't mean that genes are the point.

For instance, while we may have the capacity to reproduce, it would be odd to suggest that it is immoral not to have as many children as one can.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Its transitive. Morality assists life, life (the whole of our experience) assists the genes, thetrefore morality assists the genes.

Also, who said it assists the genes to have as many offspring as possible. Sometimes it is wise fot the organism or the species to breed less. For instance feeling and emotions may feed back (cf cybernetics) in the form of pain and anguish to someone with a serious congenital disorder, or someone having difficulty adapting to the environment ... the message
-> dont breed (or a motivaitonal deterrennt).

And even if they want to breed finding a partner would be difficult - precisely because the poorly adapted state is not a good one to bundle your genes into, because of its ethical consequences of a bad life..

So for me ethics, (as in we are situated with dignity and interests), is actually moderator or regulator of gene frequencies or population dynamics. This does not negate existential value, but actually maintains it (becauase such value is a useful adaptation). Ethics didnt happen because of random genetic drift, its a functional adaptation! So "life is precious" is itself an adaptation of life.