Secular Objective Morality

thomas100 · Feb 7, 2005

Right, but I was trying to cut off a long and probably unproductive thread where we stepped back through all the reasons why I believe things to find the basis for it all.

kedaman · Feb 7, 2005

RationalThought said:
Why does morality/immorality have to be a binary choice? I have always seen actions falling into three categories: moral, immoral, and neutral.

For example, you go to a restaurant. Paying your bill is a moral act. Skipping out on the bill is an immoral act. Ordering ranch dressing on your salad is a neutral act.

You are absolutely right. The neutral acts are permissible but not obligatory. It is a fallacy to categorize every action as right or wrong. Nevertheless being immoral and moral are mutually exhaustive. For the clean, everything is clean, for the unclean, everything is unclean.

David Gould · Feb 7, 2005

thomas100 said:
Right, but I was trying to cut off a long and probably unproductive thread where we stepped back through all the reasons why I believe things to find the basis for it all.

You see, I think this is a cop out as I think you actually don't have a basis for it all.

In fact, not knowing what the basis is for your morality completely undermines your claim that it is objective.

RationalThought · Feb 7, 2005

Let me share a theory I have been developing for a while.

If we take the desire for freedom, i.e. living as we choose without interference from others, and couple that with the Golden Rule, we have a local basis for a morality which is extensible over all mankind. We can then define immoral actions as those actions which violate this standard. All other actions are either neutral or moral. At this point in the development, I don't have a good way to objectively differentiate between moral acts and neutral acts, so any input along those lines would be greatly appreciated.

This escapes the appeal to God, or to a universal arbiter. The rest of humanity serves as the arbiter for everyone's actions. In practice, we use designated arbiters. This is for convenience and efficiency, in reality we all are arbiters.

RationalThought

mepalmer3 · Feb 7, 2005

RationalThought said:
If we take the desire for freedom, i.e. living as we choose without interference from others, and couple that with the Golden Rule, we have a local basis for a morality which is extensible over all mankind. We can then define immoral actions as those actions which violate this standard. All other actions are either neutral or moral. At this point in the development, I don't have a good way to objectively differentiate between moral acts and neutral acts, so any input along those lines would be greatly appreciated.

This escapes the appeal to God, or to a universal arbiter. The rest of humanity serves as the arbiter for everyone's actions. In practice, we use designated arbiters. This is for convenience and efficiency, in reality we all are arbiters.

What's your basis for using specifically the desire for freedom and the golden rule? Why not use the desire to dominate others? Why not use the desire to be selfish? Why not use the desire of greed and power? Was it arbitrary that you chose the golden rule and freedom?

nadroj1985 · Feb 7, 2005

RationalThought said:
If we take the desire for freedom, i.e. living as we choose without interference from others, and couple that with the Golden Rule, we have a local basis for a morality which is extensible over all mankind.

I think that might run into some problems, though. Doesn't our desire for freedom sometimes contradict the Golden Rule? A desire to live for oneself without interference might very well conflict with a rule strongly rooted in selflessness.

We can then define immoral actions as those actions which violate this standard. All other actions are either neutral or moral. At this point in the development, I don't have a good way to objectively differentiate between moral acts and neutral acts, so any input along those lines would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure I understand your distinction, so I'd agree that it needs to be differentiated. What is a "neutral" act? Why is this a necessary distinction?

RationalThought · Feb 7, 2005

mepalmer3 said:
What's your basis for using specifically the desire for freedom and the golden rule? Why not use the desire to dominate others? Why not use the desire to be selfish? Why not use the desire of greed and power? Was it arbitrary that you chose the golden rule and freedom?

My approach is based on the topological concept of a local basis for a topology. By importing this technique into ethics and morality, I can define a local rule and thereby generate the unique universal rule supported by the basis. The additional problem I face after importing the concept is similar to the problem faced when tiling a plane with uniform pieces. I am trying to avoid overlaps, which happen when I use the desire to dominate, and the desire for greed and power. Now, I can use the desire to be selfish, that would then place nonselfish acts into the class of immoral acts. What I am trying to do is fill as much space in the moral plane with a local basis without producing conflicting overlaps. The combination of freedom and the Golden Rule produces the best results I have found yet. I am always open to trying new ideas to try and produce better results.

RationalThought

RationalThought · Feb 7, 2005

nadroj1985 said:
I think that might run into some problems, though. Doesn't our desire for freedom sometimes contradict the Golden Rule? A desire to live for oneself without interference might very well conflict with a rule strongly rooted in selflessness.

To expand further from my explanation to a previous post, I am using the Golden Rule as a basis for extending a local morality which applies to one person to all people. Now, we all agree that there will be differences between people as to how they wish to be treated, so what single set of principles can we extend to everyone. I further narrow the choices by requiring that rights and freedoms are constant and cannot overlap between two people. We can all be extended the right to live, and the right to murder, but not at the same time.

As to your specific problem, I don't see how the desire to live without interference, within the context I have defined, comes into conflict with the Golden Rule. If you see a problem, I would love to either improve my thinking or resolve our miscommunication.

nadroj1985 said:
I'm not sure I understand your distinction, so I'd agree that it needs to be differentiated. What is a "neutral" act? Why is this a necessary distinction?

This was in reference to a previous post of mine.

RationalThought said:
For example, you go to a restaurant. Paying your bill is a moral act. Skipping out on the bill is an immoral act. Ordering ranch dressing on your salad is a neutral act.

I see a trinary division of our actions. Immoral actions are wrong when performed. Moral actions are those actions which are wrong when NOT performed. Neutral actions are those which can either be performed or not performed with neither option being wrong.

If I can clarify further, let me know,

RationalThought

nadroj1985 · Feb 7, 2005

RationalThought said:
We can all be extended the right to live, and the right to murder, but not at the same time.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, and that might be the problem I'm having with your system.

As to your specific problem, I don't see how the desire to live without interference, within the context I have defined, comes into conflict with the Golden Rule. If you see a problem, I would love to either improve my thinking or resolve our miscommunication.

Well, perhaps there needs to be a clearer definition of what you mean by freedom, or "living without interference." How far am I free to do what I will? If and only if it does not violate another's freedom? If that's what you're saying, I think I was just misunderstanding you earlier. That works fine

I see a trinary division of our actions. Immoral actions are wrong when performed. Moral actions are those actions which are wrong when NOT performed. Neutral actions are those which can either be performed or not performed with neither option being wrong.

My question is what makes neutral actions amoral. In your example:

For example, you go to a restaurant. Paying your bill is a moral act. Skipping out on the bill is an immoral act. Ordering ranch dressing on your salad is a neutral act.

Are the first two moral and immoral, under your system, because they deal with interactions with other people (i.e. skipping the bill is immoral because it infringes on the restaurant owner's rights), while the third is amoral because it concerns only the person who is committing the action? By that reasoning, does it follow that any action that I commit that doesn't affect anyone outside me could be described as neutral? Would suicide, for instance, be categorized as neutral?

Or is there a different distinction I'm missing?

Robert the Pilegrim · Feb 8, 2005

mepalmer3 said:
What's your basis for using specifically the desire for freedom and the golden rule? Why not use the desire to dominate others? Why not use the desire to be selfish? Why not use the desire of greed and power? Was it arbitrary that you chose the golden rule and freedom?

"There, but for the grace of God, go I"

Somewhere in the ... 1700s-early 1800s a fairly simple method was used as a starting place for thinking about what consists of a desirable society, and that was to pretend that you don't know where you are going to start when you are put into that society.

If you set up your rules to help the greedy, somebody else may whomp on you. If you start as a working stiff you don't want the poor to live in luxury that is paid for with your tax dollars, but you may lose your job so you don't want them screwed over either.

Many dictators have had long runs of the good life, but others have ended up in spider infested holes or had to run for the airport one step ahead of the coup. (note that in South America there appeared to be an unwritten code that you let the guy you are overthrowing escape, else when your time comes ...)

I've noted that most libertarians, esp. Rand followers are exactly the types who would flourish, they have mostly already had the advantages of a good education and are positioned for the good life if only society didn't insist on taking care of the poor and playing fair so you don't screw others over.

RationalThought · Feb 8, 2005

nadroj1985 said:
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, and that might be the problem I'm having with your system.

If we extend to everyone the right to live, and then we extend the right to murder, there is an overlap between those two rights. Whenever the right to murder is exercised, the right to live is violated. So, to avoid contradiction only one of those rights can be included.

nadroj1985 said:
Well, perhaps there needs to be a clearer definition of what you mean by freedom, or "living without interference." How far am I free to do what I will? If and only if it does not violate another's freedom? If that's what you're saying, I think I was just misunderstanding you earlier. That works fine

That definition works just fine. And they are free to act as long as they do not violate your freedom as well. The exact same freedom is extended to all people. A relief that we are on the same page here.

nadroj1985 said:
My question is what makes neutral actions amoral. In your example:

For example, you go to a restaurant. Paying your bill is a moral act. Skipping out on the bill is an immoral act. Ordering ranch dressing on your salad is a neutral act.

Click to expand...

Are the first two moral and immoral, under your system, because they deal with interactions with other people (i.e. skipping the bill is immoral because it infringes on the restaurant owner's rights), while the third is amoral because it concerns only the person who is committing the action? By that reasoning, does it follow that any action that I commit that doesn't affect anyone outside me could be described as neutral? Would suicide, for instance, be categorized as neutral?

Or is there a different distinction I'm missing?

Nice catch there. I did not realize that my example allowed that interpretation.

You are right that actions which do not affect anyone else would be neutral. And that would include suicide. Of course suicide would still carry all the negative connotations it does now, just because an action is neutral in regard to morality does not mean it is desirable to be performed.

The point which is of importance is not that the action concerns only the person committing the action, it is that either committing the action results in a freedom violation, or the lack of committing the action results in a freedom violation. A improvement over the ranch dressing example is calling the waitress by her name. I almost never do this, while some of my friends always do this. I see no violation of freedom in either choice.

Thanks for the pointers helping me fine tune, any more suggestions for improvement?

RationalThought

RationalThought · Feb 8, 2005

Robert the Pilegrim said:
"There, but for the grace of God, go I"

Somewhere in the ... 1700s-early 1800s a fairly simple method was used as a starting place for thinking about what consists of a desirable society, and that was to pretend that you don't know where you are going to start when you are put into that society.

If you set up your rules to help the greedy, somebody else may whomp on you. If you start as a working stiff you don't want the poor to live in luxury that is paid for with your tax dollars, but you may lose your job so you don't want them screwed over either.

Many dictators have had long runs of the good life, but others have ended up in spider infested holes or had to run for the airport one step ahead of the coup. (note that in South America there appeared to be an unwritten code that you let the guy you are overthrowing escape, else when your time comes ...)

I've noted that most libertarians, esp. Rand followers are exactly the types who would flourish, they have mostly already had the advantages of a good education and are positioned for the good life if only society didn't insist on taking care of the poor and playing fair so you don't screw others over.

The concept of not know one's place in society was formally introduced to philosophy as the "Veil of Ignorance" by John Rawls. The ideas were first examined by Rousseau and Locke and used by Jefferson and the Founders.

Great observation about the libertarians. To that I can add my own observations. They discount or ignore the increased ability from synergy that an organized group can accomplish over the same number of people acting independently. They undervalue the power the employer has in the employer/employee relationship. They equate the easy of getting another employee with the easy of getting another job.

RationalThought

Robert the Pilegrim · Feb 8, 2005

RationalThought said:
The concept of not know one's place in society was formally introduced to philosophy as the "Veil of Ignorance" by John Rawls. The ideas were first examined by Rousseau and Locke and used by Jefferson and the Founders.

Bingo! Thanks for the reference, it has been many years and, as should be obvious from my post, my memories of the details were vague

RationalThought said:
[Libertarians] undervalue the power the employer has in the employer/employee relationship. They equate the easy of getting another employee with the easy of getting another job.

<rolls eyes>
Please stop, you're bringing back bad memories.

I only brought them up because of the question of using greed as a base principle, which was, to a large extent, Rand's guiding principle.

I think there is a lot of value to be found in libertarian thought, but I think it should be considered an important ?bounding parameter? rather than a driving principle.

Robert the Pilegrim · Feb 8, 2005

RationalThought said:
You are right that actions which do not affect anyone else would be neutral. And that would include suicide.

My suicide would have a profound impact on my children and their suicides would have a profound impact on me.

There are very few actions in the world that do not affect other people. Now at some point you run into offense kleptomaniacs* and in general trying to figure out nth order effects takes more time than it is worth, but going back to suicide, even if you posit somebody who has no connections with anybody else it is a pretty fair bet that somebody is going to find the body.

With respect to offense kleptomaniacs, at some point people are so thin skinned any offense they take has to be counted as a self-inflicted wound, OTOH anybody who thinks that the Rebel flag is just a symbol of independence and shouldn't give offense to blacks and many other people has their head buried ... in the ground.

*Some people are offence kleptomaniacs -- whenever they see an offence that isn't nailed down, they take it ;-)
--David C. Pugh

Robert the Pilegrim · Feb 8, 2005

David Gould said:
There can be no objective morality. This is because the supposedly objective first principle can only be an axiom. And axioms do not have reasons.

From American Heritage via dictionary.com
Objective
1. Of or having to do with a material object.
2. Having actual existence or reality.

I posit a Creator who created a metaphysics of morality, created a real morality when she created the physics of the universe.

One might find evidence of such a morality by looking cross culturally or by looking in a book inspired by that Creator.

Of course deciding which book was inspired by that Creator might cause some difficulties.

While not proof exactly, a broad cross cultural valuing of such things as honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, and compassion might suggest that, whether via a creator or otherwise, there is an underlying objective morality.

RationalThought · Feb 8, 2005

Robert the Pilegrim said:
My suicide would have a profound impact on my children and their suicides would have a profound impact on me.

There are very few actions in the world that do not affect other people. Now at some point you run into offense kleptomaniacs* and in general trying to figure out nth order effects takes more time than it is worth, but going back to suicide, even if you posit somebody who has no connections with anybody else it is a pretty fair bet that somebody is going to find the body.

With respect to offense kleptomaniacs, at some point people are so thin skinned any offense they take has to be counted as a self-inflicted wound, OTOH anybody who thinks that the Rebel flag is just a symbol of independence and shouldn't give offense to blacks and many other people has their head buried ... in the ground.

*Some people are offence kleptomaniacs -- whenever they see an offence that isn't nailed down, they take it ;-)
--David C. Pugh

You are right about the entanglement around virtually every action. This is a very tough boundary to define. I tend to go with physical harm being the criteria for defining affect, though even that excludes some financial aspects which I think should be included. By limiting to physical and perhaps financial harm we can eliminate those offense kleptomaniacs you so rightly point out.

BTW my favorite defense of the Rebel flag is "heritage, not hatred". I like to point out that that reasoning would be very troubling coming from Germany about the Swastika.

RationalThought

thomas100 · Feb 8, 2005

David Gould said:
You see, I think this is a cop out as I think you actually don't have a basis for it all.

In fact, not knowing what the basis is for your morality completely undermines your claim that it is objective.

But I do know and claim the basis for objective morality. The question just ends up as can I prove it. And because that ends up as the question "prove that God exists" and "prove that He inspired the Bible" I have to say that I cannot prove it. But being unable to prove it is far from saying that the claim can not be correct. If God exists and if the Bible is his inspired word then we do have the basis for objective morality and it is a coherent view not absurd or nonsensical.

nadroj1985 · Feb 8, 2005

RationalThought said:
Nice catch there. I did not realize that my example allowed that interpretation.

You are right that actions which do not affect anyone else would be neutral. And that would include suicide. Of course suicide would still carry all the negative connotations it does now, just because an action is neutral in regard to morality does not mean it is desirable to be performed.

The point which is of importance is not that the action concerns only the person committing the action, it is that either committing the action results in a freedom violation, or the lack of committing the action results in a freedom violation. A improvement over the ranch dressing example is calling the waitress by her name. I almost never do this, while some of my friends always do this. I see no violation of freedom in either choice.

Well, the problem comes in of how you define violation of freedom, IMO, as you brought up a couple posts back. I'm not sure how useful it would be to keep it as just physical/financial harm. . . consider adultery, for example. The act is generally considered immoral, not because of physical harm, but because of emotional harm. A person who cheats on their spouse has caused real harm to another human being, and in my opinion has done something he/she should not do, or has committed an immoral act. It seems to me that we must take emotional harm into account.

But, of course, the problem with that is that the "neutral" act distinction goes right out the window, IMO. Everything we do has effects, both intentional and unintentional, on the states of others around us, especially if we begin talking about altering emotional states. To live, to be a "self," is to influence the world around you, or to exert your will to power on the world in Nietzschean terms, and this includes affecting the people around you. We don't have to agree with a will-to-power concept to agree with this, though. If your life is making no difference to existence as a whole, how does it make sense to say that you're participating in life in any meaningful way? So, it seems to me that every act we commit, under your system, must be considered moral or immoral.

Perhaps some distinction could be made between "direct" and "indirect" harm, or intentional and unintentional harm, although that would change your system around a bit and might bring up new problems.

David Gould · Feb 8, 2005

thomas100 said:
But I do know and claim the basis for objective morality. The question just ends up as can I prove it. And because that ends up as the question "prove that God exists" and "prove that He inspired the Bible" I have to say that I cannot prove it. But being unable to prove it is far from saying that the claim can not be correct. If God exists and if the Bible is his inspired word then we do have the basis for objective morality and it is a coherent view not absurd or nonsensical.

No, because it is not a question of whether God exists or not. The question is (assuming that God does exist), 'Why should God's word be followed?' In other words, from where does God's moral authority derive?

mepalmer3 · Feb 8, 2005

David Gould said:
No, because it is not a question of whether God exists or not. The question is (assuming that God does exist), 'Why should God's word be followed?' In other words, from where does God's moral authority derive?

There are 2 primary & different views on this.

A. One is the idea that Good/Evil are separate from God and everything he does is judged against that standard. Then a question might be asked, well what made the other good standard good? And we can infinitely regress in asking this question.

B. The other view is that God himself is pure goodness. In the same way that logic and truth are absolutes, God also is absolutely good, absolutely perfect. And him being the only necessary thing, he is uncaused and there is no good/evil standard apart from him. In this view, every bit of love, every bit of logical reasoning are things from God. And consequently, every bit of dishonesty, every bad deed, every bit of poor reasoning are not something coming from God.

Christianity claims B.

So why should God's word be followed, why should truth matter, why should we be good, why should we be logical and honest, and why do we exist are all meaningless questions (and illusions) if God doesn't exist.

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Secular Objective Morality

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