Where is the hope in atheism?

[Silmarien]

None of that should matter. You keep saying that nihilism must follow from atheism, so you should be able to explain how that is so without arguing about my personal value systems. If you need to argue about how I choose what to value, we can do that, but we won't be talking about nihilism anymore. All you'll be doing is arguing that my value system is bad or illusory or what-have-you. You certainly wouldn't be showing that atheism should lead to nihilism.

You were asking why you personally should be a nihilist. I can't really answer that without knowing precisely how you avoid nihilistic conclusions at present. If there's something wrong with your reasoning, we can go over it.

It would be a bit like a YEC thinking that if he can disprove evolution, then automatically YECism is true. You would need to walk back your claim to something more along the lines of "Every atheist I've met chooses his values in a bad way", or something to that effect. Or better yet, show how theism avoids nihilism in a way that only theism can do.

Why would I ever say that atheists choose their values in bad ways? Nihilism rules out the possibility of there ever being "bad" or "good" reasons for anything.

It is somewhat difficult to ground moral reasoning assuming a naturalistic ontology. The best option I'm aware of is to say that certain behaviors are "good" for us psychologically, and that a moral life is in many senses a healthy life. This can to a certain extent be applied to the society at large, but the problem is that we're just arbitrarily assigning the value "good" to concepts like health and flourishing. Is there anything objectively "better" about health than illness? No, not really.

Theism has the advantage of in some sense identifying existence with goodness, because God as the Ground of Being is also thought to be transcendentally good. All of our grasping for goodness, for purpose, and so forth and so on, is ultimately grasping for God. The whole cosmos in a way moves forward out of desire for God.

Without that, what do you have? We're the accidental offspring of a purposeless universe, with the need to propagate our genes bred into us through billions of years of evolution, procreation for the sake of procreation, a cycle of sacrifice and death as lifeforms feed upon each other. There's actually a touch of the Lovecraftian about existence once you strip away the transcendentals and all of the religious baggage about the sacredness of life.

A lot of people don't see that, and I'm not sure why. Even theism doesn't dig me out of this particular hole entirely, since I'm a bit on the deistic side and can't really reason my way to there being any actual point to anything at all. But at least there's genuine hope under theism that reality actually does match up to the really beautiful versions that make sense of human existence.

 

[Moral Orel]

It is somewhat difficult to ground moral reasoning assuming a naturalistic ontology. The best option I'm aware of is to say that certain behaviors are "good" for us psychologically, and that a moral life is in many senses a healthy life. This can to a certain extent be applied to the society at large, but the problem is that we're just arbitrarily assigning the value "good" to concepts like health and flourishing. Is there anything objectively "better" about health than illness? No, not really.

All values are subjective. No one can escape from that. I like chocolate ice cream, so that has value to me. Some people hate it. There's no objectively right answer to the question, "Is chocolate ice cream tasty?". When you consider your values, you can build a moral framework that is objectively better at achieving what you value, but it will always be based on subjectivity.

Theism has the advantage of in some sense identifying existence with goodness, because God as the Ground of Being is also thought to be transcendentally good. All of our grasping for goodness, for purpose, and so forth and so on, is ultimately grasping for God. The whole cosmos in a way moves forward out of desire for God.

You'll have to explain what it means to be "transcendentally good". How is calling God "good" less arbitrary than calling health "good"?

Without that, what do you have? We're the accidental offspring of a purposeless universe, with the need to propagate our genes bred into us through billions of years of evolution, procreation for the sake of procreation, a cycle of sacrifice and death as lifeforms feed upon each other. There's actually a touch of the Lovecraftian about existence once you strip away the transcendentals and all of the religious baggage about the sacredness of life.

As a man who got himself "fixed" before he could have any biological children, this point about following biological directives is lost on me. Without any god concept, you have people doing what they like, and placing importance on what they value. Theists tend to value what they think God's opinion is on how they ought to act to make their morals, atheists tend to value their own opinion on how they ought to act to make their morals. Why should I reject all morals just because they're based on subjectivity. I'll always enjoy eating chocolate ice cream, and there are objectively better ways at getting and eating it than others. Why should I never do the things most likely to get me more chocolate ice cream?

 

[apogee]

Why should I reject all morals just because they're based on subjectivity. I'll always enjoy eating chocolate ice cream, and there are objectively better ways at getting and eating it than others. Why should I never do the things most likely to get me more chocolate ice cream?

That's ok by me, but you might want to bring your case to these people instead.

Vegan Forum

 

[Silmarien]

All values are subjective. No one can escape from that. I like chocolate ice cream, so that has value to me. Some people hate it. There's no objectively right answer to the question, "Is chocolate ice cream tasty?". When you consider your values, you can build a moral framework that is objectively better at achieving what you value, but it will always be based on subjectivity.

When values are attached to physical sensations, there is an objective element that comes into play. You cannot subjectively decide what ice cream tastes like, though I suppose you can to a certain degree train yourself to like specific tastes. Still, your response is to something real (the physically existent ice cream) and not to something you made up.

With morality, it's different for multiple reasons. First, what is it referring to in the external world? You can value ice cream because its taste is grounded in objective facts about its chemistry and your biology, but what is it about something like world peace, for example, that would make you value it? If you can identify something about it that would inherently make it good, then you are a moral realist. If you cannot but persist in valuing it anyway, then you are being irrational. This is my problem with subjective morality: it is so much feel good irrational emotivism.

The second issue with it is that we want our values to bind not just us but other people as well. If you like chocolate and I like vanilla, that is obviously not the end of the world, but it would not make much sense to say that murder is bad for me, but you can go kill whoever you want. Why can I bind you to my subjective concept of morality?

You'll have to explain what it means to be "transcendentally good". How is calling God "good" less arbitrary than calling health "good"?

My reasoning here is very Platonic. It's not that God is being called good, but that God is the source of all of our concepts of goodness. Existence is not good because I have arbitrarily decided that it is good, but because it is by its nature good. If I disagree, I am wrong, and will suffer because of that.

The transcendentals refer to medieval philosophy on the nature of being itself. Goodness, beauty, truth, and unity are viewed as being attributes of God and therefore of existence rather than being created by us subjectively. Our finite experience of beauty, for example, is better described as a response to the mystery of being itself instead of just being an arbitrary matter of likes and dislikes.

If you can ever actually conceptualize what this sort of transcendentalism really means, stripping it away again does just leave everything empty. We become pantomimes, playing out some bizarre farce of meaning, with all of our subjective impressions about reality referring to absolutely nothing. But we cling to them because they feel good.

As a man who got himself "fixed" before he could have any biological children, this point about following biological directives is lost on me.

Survival is itself a biological directive which you are following. Pain and pleasure are part of a physiological reward and punishment system meant to keep you obeying this biological directive. Everything we are is a result of our evolutionary heritage, so it is difficult to escape the reality that we are in our very being the result of biological programming. But to what purpose?

Why should I reject all morals just because they're based on subjectivity. I'll always enjoy eating chocolate ice cream, and there are objectively better ways at getting and eating it than others. Why should I never do the things most likely to get me more chocolate ice cream?

Honestly, you're digging your own grave here with this analogy. You're going to get a lot of people up in arms if you compare following moral imperatives with doing things that are likely to get you more ice cream. This is why people think atheists are nihilists. (For the record, I do not have a problem with nihilism. I think it's a very defensible position. It's relativism that I consider idiotic.)

That said, moral nihilism doesn't imply that you should refrain from acting in a "moral" way. Some nihilists will argue against traditional morality, but others will say it's a useful fiction. The question is whether morality is actually coherent. If you think it's subjective but real, you're either going to end up with something very paradoxical or be operating under a totally different definition of the word "morality."

 

[bhsmte]

When values are attached to physical sensations, there is an objective element that comes into play. You cannot subjectively decide what ice cream tastes like, though I suppose you can to a certain degree train yourself to like specific tastes. Still, your response is to something real (the physically existent ice cream) and not to something you made up.

With morality, it's different for multiple reasons. First, what is it referring to in the external world? You can value ice cream because its taste is grounded in objective facts about its chemistry and your biology, but what is it about something like world peace, for example, that would make you value it? If you can identify something about it that would inherently make it good, then you are a moral realist. If you cannot but persist in valuing it anyway, then you are being irrational. This is my problem with subjective morality: it is so much feel good irrational emotivism.

The second issue with it is that we want our values to bind not just us but other people as well. If you like chocolate and I like vanilla, that is obviously not the end of the world, but it would not make much sense to say that murder is bad for me, but you can go kill whoever you want. Why can I bind you to my subjective concept of morality?



My reasoning here is very Platonic. It's not that God is being called good, but that God is the source of all of our concepts of goodness. Existence is not good because I have arbitrarily decided that it is good, but because it is by its nature good. If I disagree, I am wrong, and will suffer because of that.

The transcendentals refer to medieval philosophy on the nature of being itself. Goodness, beauty, truth, and unity are viewed as being attributes of God and therefore of existence rather than being created by us subjectively. Our finite experience of beauty, for example, is better described as a response to the mystery of being itself instead of just being an arbitrary matter of likes and dislikes.

If you can ever actually conceptualize what this sort of transcendentalism really means, stripping it away again does just leave everything empty. We become pantomimes, playing out some bizarre farce of meaning, with all of our subjective impressions about reality referring to absolutely nothing. But we cling to them because they feel good.



Survival is itself a biological directive which you are following. Pain and pleasure are part of a physiological reward and punishment system meant to keep you obeying this biological directive. Everything we are is a result of our evolutionary heritage, so it is difficult to escape the reality that we are in our very being the result of biological programming. But to what purpose?



Honestly, you're digging your own grave here with this analogy. You're going to get a lot of people up in arms if you compare following moral imperatives with doing things that are likely to get you more ice cream. This is why people think atheists are nihilists. (For the record, I do not have a problem with nihilism. I think it's a very defensible position. It's relativism that I consider idiotic.)

That said, moral nihilism doesn't imply that you should refrain from acting in a "moral" way. Some nihilists will argue against traditional morality, but others will say it's a useful fiction. The question is whether morality is actually coherent. If you think it's subjective but real, you're either going to end up with something very paradoxical or be operating under a totally different definition of the word "morality."

What do you mean by; "physical sensations"?

 

[bhsmte]

When values are attached to physical sensations, there is an objective element that comes into play. You cannot subjectively decide what ice cream tastes like, though I suppose you can to a certain degree train yourself to like specific tastes. Still, your response is to something real (the physically existent ice cream) and not to something you made up.

With morality, it's different for multiple reasons. First, what is it referring to in the external world? You can value ice cream because its taste is grounded in objective facts about its chemistry and your biology, but what is it about something like world peace, for example, that would make you value it? If you can identify something about it that would inherently make it good, then you are a moral realist. If you cannot but persist in valuing it anyway, then you are being irrational. This is my problem with subjective morality: it is so much feel good irrational emotivism.

The second issue with it is that we want our values to bind not just us but other people as well. If you like chocolate and I like vanilla, that is obviously not the end of the world, but it would not make much sense to say that murder is bad for me, but you can go kill whoever you want. Why can I bind you to my subjective concept of morality?



My reasoning here is very Platonic. It's not that God is being called good, but that God is the source of all of our concepts of goodness. Existence is not good because I have arbitrarily decided that it is good, but because it is by its nature good. If I disagree, I am wrong, and will suffer because of that.

The transcendentals refer to medieval philosophy on the nature of being itself. Goodness, beauty, truth, and unity are viewed as being attributes of God and therefore of existence rather than being created by us subjectively. Our finite experience of beauty, for example, is better described as a response to the mystery of being itself instead of just being an arbitrary matter of likes and dislikes.

If you can ever actually conceptualize what this sort of transcendentalism really means, stripping it away again does just leave everything empty. We become pantomimes, playing out some bizarre farce of meaning, with all of our subjective impressions about reality referring to absolutely nothing. But we cling to them because they feel good.



Survival is itself a biological directive which you are following. Pain and pleasure are part of a physiological reward and punishment system meant to keep you obeying this biological directive. Everything we are is a result of our evolutionary heritage, so it is difficult to escape the reality that we are in our very being the result of biological programming. But to what purpose?



Honestly, you're digging your own grave here with this analogy. You're going to get a lot of people up in arms if you compare following moral imperatives with doing things that are likely to get you more ice cream. This is why people think atheists are nihilists. (For the record, I do not have a problem with nihilism. I think it's a very defensible position. It's relativism that I consider idiotic.)

That said, moral nihilism doesn't imply that you should refrain from acting in a "moral" way. Some nihilists will argue against traditional morality, but others will say it's a useful fiction. The question is whether morality is actually coherent. If you think it's subjective but real, you're either going to end up with something very paradoxical or be operating under a totally different definition of the word "morality."

What do you mean by; "physical sensations"?

 

[Silmarien]

What do you mean by; "physical sensations"?

Taste is a physical sensation. You can't really call tastes good or bad, just like you can't really call pain good or bad, but actual objective sensory input is there.

 

[bhsmte]

Taste is a physical sensation. You can't really call tastes good or bad, just like you can't really call pain good or bad, but actual objective sensory input is there.

Sure and physical sensations are interpreted differently among people, so there is no real objective tie that carries over from person to person.

There clearly is sensory input that is happening with things like pain or taste, but each person's brain, may interpret this input differently. Some people enjoy the taste of certain items, another person can't stand it. Pain or discomfort, is another good example. Take exercise for example, to attain a higher level of physical conditioning, requires the person to be willing to sustain a certain level of discomfort. Some people interpret this discomfort as a positive thing, while others are just not willing to sustain any level of discomfort. IMO, this is related to each person's personal motivation and psyche and is why there are certain people who make exercise a priority and others never will.

 

[bhsmte]

Taste is a physical sensation. You can't really call tastes good or bad, just like you can't really call pain good or bad, but actual objective sensory input is there.

Sure and physical sensations are interpreted differently among people, so there is no real objective tie that carries over from person to person.

There clearly is sensory input that is happening with things like pain or taste, but each person's brain, may interpret this input differently. Some people enjoy the taste of certain items, another person can't stand it. Pain or discomfort, is another good example. Take exercise for example, to attain a higher level of physical conditioning, requires the person to be willing to sustain a certain level of discomfort. Some people interpret this discomfort as a positive thing, while others are just not willing to sustain any level of discomfort. IMO, this is related to each person's personal motivation and psyche and is why there are certain people who make exercise a priority and others never will.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Sure and physical sensations are interpreted differently among people, so there is no real objective tie that carries over from person to person.

There clearly is sensory input that is happening with things like pain or taste, but each person's brain, may interpret this input differently. Some people enjoy the taste of certain items, another person can't stand it. Pain or discomfort, is another good example. Take exercise for example, to attain a higher level of physical conditioning, requires the person to be willing to sustain a certain level of discomfort. Some people interpret this discomfort as a positive thing, while others are just not willing to sustain any level of discomfort. IMO, this is related to each person's personal motivation and psyche and is why there are certain people who make exercise a priority and others never will.

............................I think some of the disconnect for many (although not all) here is in the hidden assumption that objectivity must imply some kind of universality of cognitive and emotional response to various physical sensations. How much consensus among humanity has to be obtained for us to think of some phenomenon -- like smashing one's thumb accidentally with a hammer -- as demonstrative of objective value? 90%? 99% 100%? 2%?

Or is smashing one's thumb with a hammer no different than licking one of an assorted flavors of ice cream?

 

[apogee]

Synesthesia - Wikipedia

 

[Silmarien]

............................I think some of the disconnect for many (although not all) here is in the hidden assumption that objectivity must imply some kind of universality of cognitive and emotional response to various physical sensations. How much consensus among humanity has to be obtained for us to think of some phenomenon -- like smashing one's thumb accidentally with a hammer -- as demonstrative of objective value? 90%? 99% 100%? 2%?

Or is smashing one's thumb with a hammer no different than licking one of an assorted flavors of ice cream?

This is a good question. I agree that there is a strong objective element to whether specific sensations are "good" or "bad," but I'm not sure the answer is really as easy as this. I got allergy shots all the time as a child, and taught myself a breathing trick to depersonalize the pain of an injection. Now it's something I can observe pretty detachedly. Do I feel it? Yes, but in a kind of Buddhist fashion I disassociate it with being bad.

There are stories out there of people who use meditative breathing techniques and then have surgery without anesthesia. This all seems to be a matter of mentally overcoming physical stimuli, but it's a bit tricky if you want to call pain objectively bad. The stimuli are objectively real, I would say, but you can train yourself to detach.

On the other hand, it's possible that a lot of people here never have actually depersonalized their own subjective impressions like that. Learn that particular trick and the idea of subjective reality disappears. And I get very, very Eastern.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

This is a good question. I agree that there is a strong objective element to whether specific sensations are "good" or "bad," but I'm not sure the answer is really as easy as this. I got allergy shots all the time as a child, and taught myself a breathing trick to depersonalize the pain of an injection. Now it's something I can observe pretty detachedly. Do I feel it? Yes, but in a kind of Buddhist fashion I disassociate it with being bad.

There are stories out there of people who use meditative breathing techniques and then have surgery without anesthesia. This all seems to be a matter of mentally overcoming physical stimuli, but it's a bit tricky if you want to call pain objectively bad. The stimuli are objectively real, I would say, but you can train yourself to detach.

On the other hand, it's possible that a lot of people here never have actually depersonalized their own subjective impressions like that. Learn that particular trick and the idea of subjective reality disappears. And I get very, very Eastern.

....so, that explains all those flowers in your avatar.

By the way, I had allergy/asthma shots, too, when I was a teenager. And what I knew to be objectively good or bad about those shots not only depended upon whether my mom hit the correct spot in my arm each time she administered them, but also as to whether she actually flicked all of the air-bubbles out of the syringe ... or not. "......no, no, mom. Not yet. I see an air-bubble. Uh. No, don't ask me we 'where'? There! See it?! .....on no, mom! No! Don't tell me you're nervous about about giving me the shot, mom. I don't want to here that."

Ah yes, those were the days of "heightened objectivity."

 

[Silmarien]

....so, that explains all those flowers in your avatar.

By the way, I had allergy/asthma shots, too, when I was a teenager. And what I knew to be objectively good or bad about those shots not only depended upon whether my mom hit the correct spot in my arm each time she administered them, but also as to whether she actually flicked all of the air-bubbles out of the syringe ... or not. "......no, no, mom. Not yet. I see an air-bubble. Uh. No, don't ask me we 'where'? There! See it?! .....on no, mom! No! Don't tell me you're nervous about about giving me the shot, mom. I don't want to here that."

Ah yes, those were the days of "heightened objectivity."

Aww, I take it you never figured out that breathing technique, then? It's for real!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Unfortunately, I don't read whatever that is. (Arabic?)

Aww, I take it you never figured out that breathing technique, then? It's for real!

No. But in my case, we're talking early 80's here; I don't remember the doctor ever offering that, nor hearing anything on t.v. promoting breathing techniques. I was just concerned with breathing...at all, as well as with the air-bubbles in those syringes, which I'm guessing your breathing technique doesn't cover.

 

[Silmarien]

Unfortunately, I don't read whatever that is. (Arabic?)

Devanagari for "om."

No. But in my case, we're talking early 80's here; I don't remember the doctor ever offering that, nor hearing anything on t.v. promoting breathing techniques. I was just concerned with breathing...at all, as well as with the air-bubbles in those syringes, which I'm guessing your breathing technique doesn't cover.

Actually, the first time someone ever told me to use a breathing technique was with the flu shot this year! I just figured it out independently, and it turns out that it really is a thing.

 

[Moral Orel]

When values are attached to physical sensations, there is an objective element that comes into play. You cannot subjectively decide what ice cream tastes like, though I suppose you can to a certain degree train yourself to like specific tastes. Still, your response is to something real (the physically existent ice cream) and not to something you made up.

With morality, it's different for multiple reasons. First, what is it referring to in the external world? You can value ice cream because its taste is grounded in objective facts about its chemistry and your biology, but what is it about something like world peace, for example, that would make you value it? If you can identify something about it that would inherently make it good, then you are a moral realist. If you cannot but persist in valuing it anyway, then you are being irrational. This is my problem with subjective morality: it is so much feel good irrational emotivism.

The second issue with it is that we want our values to bind not just us but other people as well. If you like chocolate and I like vanilla, that is obviously not the end of the world, but it would not make much sense to say that murder is bad for me, but you can go kill whoever you want. Why can I bind you to my subjective concept of morality?

All values are attached to physical sensations because all values are based on emotions. Nothing is inherently "good" because whether something is good or not is based on a subjective judgement. "World peace" is just a big ball of values. I think world peace would be great because pain feels bad and getting shot causes pain, etc... World peace means less people getting shot, which means less pain. Now full disclosure, I have strong sociopathic tendencies. So I don't "feel" the pain of others who are killed, but I can sympathize to an extent. For me, mostly, world peace would be good out of the selfish reason that it makes it less likely that I would feel the pain of war, but for most people they actually feel other people's pain through empathy, so it all still comes back to subjective feelings.

And so what if things are based on subjective feelings? Absolutely everything anyone (even God if He exists) does is because of some emotional drive. Well, there are some people who have actual psychiatric problems where they truly don't feel emotions. You might think they make the most rational choices, but they don't. They're crippled by indecision. They can't choose between using a blue pen or a black pen to write a not because they lack even the emotional drive of a tiny preference.

Now where I think your problem lies is that you think morals are based on feelings, but not really. Emotions create our values, so that's all subjective. And true, feeling a feeling isn't "rational". But when we choose how to act in a way that results in more good feelings than bad feelings, those choices are rational. Just because the feelings and the choices are tied doesn't make everything irrational. That's sort of the idea between anger management. Sure, you'll sometimes irrationally feel angry about the actions of others, but you can still make rational choices about your own actions in response to them.

Lastly, how do I push my morals on others? I try to only do so for the things that cause the most drastic changes, you know, murder and the like. But sure, my subjective feelings make me want to get other people to act in a manner that makes it more likely for me to feel good feelings. I guess that's just a matter of democracy. Thanks to empathy, and in my case sympathy, it's simple enough to determine the things that make the most good feelings in the most people in a lot of cases. What gives me that right? I dunno, might? Who cares? What does that have to do with me rejecting my own personal morals?

My reasoning here is very Platonic. It's not that God is being called good, but that God is the source of all of our concepts of goodness. Existence is not good because I have arbitrarily decided that it is good, but because it is by its nature good. If I disagree, I am wrong, and will suffer because of that.

The transcendentals refer to medieval philosophy on the nature of being itself. Goodness, beauty, truth, and unity are viewed as being attributes of God and therefore of existence rather than being created by us subjectively. Our finite experience of beauty, for example, is better described as a response to the mystery of being itself instead of just being an arbitrary matter of likes and dislikes.

If you can ever actually conceptualize what this sort of transcendentalism really means, stripping it away again does just leave everything empty. We become pantomimes, playing out some bizarre farce of meaning, with all of our subjective impressions about reality referring to absolutely nothing. But we cling to them because they feel good.

You're still losing me on this point. Talk to me like I'm 4. Because it still sounds like you are just defining "existence" and "God" as "good" which seems arbitrary.

I use the word "good" as a descriptor of something I like. Ice cream is good because I find it tasty (totally subjective). Getting a job to earn money is good because it allows me to buy chocolate ice cream (this is objectively true, is it not?). "Existence is good"? Maybe if you like existing... Some people have lives that they'd rather not have. If I didn't like existing, then existence would be bad.

Survival is itself a biological directive which you are following. Pain and pleasure are part of a physiological reward and punishment system meant to keep you obeying this biological directive. Everything we are is a result of our evolutionary heritage, so it is difficult to escape the reality that we are in our very being the result of biological programming. But to what purpose?

Except it seems we've gotten to a point that we can exploit the whole pleasure and pain part of our evolutionary heritage, haven't we? If everything drove us only to survive as long as possible, then diet and exercise would be a lot more fun for me. I choose other things that are detrimental to my survival because I enjoy them more than things that are beneficial to my survival.

Honestly, you're digging your own grave here with this analogy. You're going to get a lot of people up in arms if you compare following moral imperatives with doing things that are likely to get you more ice cream. This is why people think atheists are nihilists. (For the record, I do not have a problem with nihilism. I think it's a very defensible position. It's relativism that I consider idiotic.)

That said, moral nihilism doesn't imply that you should refrain from acting in a "moral" way. Some nihilists will argue against traditional morality, but others will say it's a useful fiction. The question is whether morality is actually coherent. If you think it's subjective but real, you're either going to end up with something very paradoxical or be operating under a totally different definition of the word "morality."

Heh, I guess if I said that "I like chocolate ice cream" was my one and only value, you might have a point. Heck, even if it was, I would still model morality in what would commonly be considered a "good" way.

Consider this, I could kill someone for their chocolate ice cream, but that would put me at greater risk of being killed in self defense, and then I would never get any chocolate ice cream again! Heaven forbid!

So maybe I could steal it, or money to buy it, and then I'd risk going to jail and being denied chocolate ice cream for a while. Not as long as forever, but still too long to go without chocolate ice cream.

So I think it's best to get a job, earn money, and buy my chocolate ice cream legitimately. That objectively gives me the best odds of getting a steady stream of chocolate ice cream for as long as possible.

But maybe my love for chocolate ice cream will drive me to be a glutton? Well, to a certain extent, maybe (in my personal case, kind of). But if I eat too much chocolate ice cream then I could end up a diabetic, lose a leg or two, and that would seriously hinder my ability to go to work, earn money and buy more chocolate ice cream, so I guess I need to find some moderation.

So there you have it, a love of chocolate ice cream has caused me to decide not to kill, steal, or even over indulge just for starters. Sounds like a great starting point for morality to me.

How is subjective not real? Why do you think that something can't be both? My good feelings when I eat chocolate ice cream are as real as anything else I can confirm. I certainly find morals useful, but I don't see why anyone would call them a fiction. If my subjective feelings are real, and if there are real ways to cause those feelings objectively more often than other ways, what is fictitious?


ETA tl;dr version:
What motivates us to act is irrational and subjective, how we choose which way to act can be rational and objective.

 

[Silmarien]

Lastly, how do I push my morals on others? I try to only do so for the things that cause the most drastic changes, you know, murder and the like. But sure, my subjective feelings make me want to get other people to act in a manner that makes it more likely for me to feel good feelings.

What about something like women's rights in the Middle East? Does systemic oppression only matter in so far as it interferes with your own happiness, whether because you experience it yourself or because you have to look at it?

How exactly are you defining morality? I'm not convinced we're even thinking about the same thing, since your account so far seems exquisitely hedonistic. What is "moral" to you appears to be a matter of acting in a way that will make you feel good, which explains why analogies about ice cream come up immediately. It seems to me that you are already for all intents and purposes a moral nihilist, and are simply using the word "morality" as a stand-in for whatever makes you personally happy. (Again, being a moral nihilist does not mean rejecting moral decision making; it just means believing that moral statements are contentless.)

Traditionally speaking, there are three major theories of ethics: deontology, whereby people have duties and obligations to each other, virtue ethics, whereby developing moral character is the goal, and utilitarianism, which involves maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering at the societal level.

You're still losing me on this point. Talk to me like I'm 4. Because it still sounds like you are just defining "existence" and "God" as "good" which seems arbitrary.

I use the word "good" as a descriptor of something I like. Ice cream is good because I find it tasty (totally subjective). Getting a job to earn money is good because it allows me to buy chocolate ice cream (this is objectively true, is it not?). "Existence is good"? Maybe if you like existing... Some people have lives that they'd rather not have. If I didn't like existing, then existence would be bad.

Yes, I'm working within a very different metaphysical system whereby values are objectively built into reality. You would need to do away with the objective/subjective divide and see the two as somewhat more strongly interconnected to really understand it, I suppose. Here's a theological definition of good: that which is intrinsically valuable, i.e., apt to be desired, loved, enjoyed, appreciated in some way by some appetite (some dynamism that tends towards something). (This is from W. Norris Clarke's Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics.)

So ice cream is not good because you like it, but instead you like it because there is something intrinsically good about it. I doubt a Thomist is going to say that everyone has to like chocolate ice cream because it objectively tastes good, but they might say that we derive enjoyment from the act of eating because it's a matter of participating in existence, and therefore we can value tastes. At least that's the best approximation I can come up with given this example.

As for existence being bad if you do not like existing, even many atheists are going to argue that this is not a normal state. If you dislike existence, there must be some root cause; the default is to find life good, and if you think it is not worth living, the reason behind that ought to be identified and corrected. Under a more theistic understanding, if you think existence is bad, you are simply wrong. It can feel bad to you, but this is likely because you are in some sense either prevented from recognizing its inherent goodness or actively rejecting it, leading to all of your valuations being off kilter. Which is a little bit like the atheistic answer, but honestly a lot stronger. I'm a melancholic and tend to find existence undesirable for literally no reason whatsoever; under atheism, that's just my subjective impression and ultimately doesn't matter at all, but under the more robust versions of theism, that is rebellion and really, really bad. Which is why I like Pascal's Wager.

 

[Moral Orel]

@Silmarien Is there more coming? I almost responded to the first bit before you edited in the second, and I'd really prefer to read your whole response to take it all in context. It's fine if you want to do it in installments like that, just let me know when it's finished is all.

 

[Silmarien]

@Silmarien Is there more coming? I almost responded to the first bit before you edited in the second, and I'd really prefer to read your whole response to take it all in context. It's fine if you want to do it in installments like that, just let me know when it's finished is all.

Sorry, haha. I realized belatedly that I ought to answer actual theological questions, even if they're complicated ones. Or maybe especially if they're complicated ones. Hopefully my response makes any sense at all.

The only other thing I would reply to on the theological level is your comment about how even God, if he exists, would have to be driven by emotions. There is actually a bitter debate within theism over this very issue. You've got people on one side who think God is a person like us, but maximally perfect (whatever that means), and therefore would be emotional, and those of us who say NOPE, unchanging and unmoved grounds of existence. The traditional Christian picture of God depicts him as eternally rejoicing, but not subject to changeable emotions. If God could change, then there would need to be something greater than God that could change him, and then that unchanging thing would be God instead. Even if you want to get less classical about it, emotions are linked to biochemistry and are in some sense physical in nature, so it is strange to say that a non-physical "entity" might experience them.

But yeah, that's all I'd have to say right now.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

From a neurological perspective, there is no difference between experiencing the taste or sensations of ice cream, a delusional vision of doing so, or a vivid memory of having done so. They will all activate the same areas, even the motoric centres, the unwanted effects just get pruned out (so that we don't move our tongues in this instance). This is why we say our mouths water when thinking about foods we like, for from a neurological perspective we are in essence then experiencing them.
So if I have a vivid memory or delusion of licking ice cream, did I lick ice cream? Of course not, we could say, but we cannot really determine that is the case physically, without roping in extraneous factors like intersubjectivity or a grander narrative of self.

So with values, we don't have anything more than neurological determinations, assuming a materialist, neurological consciousness. Innate values could only be determined beyond the self, and if we only assume the latter, then they are functionally illusiory at best. If we assume they exist, then you presuppose something beyond brute material existence, and that is the low road to Theism or a world of Forms.