Where is the hope in atheism?

[apogee]

I am not entirely opposed to using the word "hedonistic" to describe the Christian hope of eternity spent in the presence of a God who is goodness itself. It's a really attractive picture--if it weren't, why would it be desirable at all? But now we're dealing once more with infinite goods as opposed to finite ones, and I'm frankly disturbed that people can't recognize the difference between the two. Everyone needs to read more mysticism. It's good for the imagination.

I can't say I disagree with this, although my natural inclination is more towards stoicism, which is admittedly pretty miserable, and certainly not any less self-centred. I think you are correct though, and although I would dogmatically identify as an Agnostic Theist, it isn't for want of ecstatic experiences, particularly in the early days of my Christianity. I would like to read up on some mystics.

 

[Silmarien]

I explained why I feel it is morally bankrupt.

Could you explain your system for valuation of morality and why this system works for you?

How can you simultaneously hold that something is morally bankrupt without subscribing to a system of valuation? You might as well call thunderstorms morally bankrupt.

I have touched upon my approach to virtue ethics a time or two already. I think what is good for human flourishing can be tied to our psychology (which is objective), and that the way that you behave will influence the way you are. The fundamental values of Christianity--love, mercy, and grace--do seem to lead to a qualifiably better life than being bogged down by hatred and vengeance, so I am deeply suspicious of any version of Christianity that does not fully encourage those traits.

 

[bhsmte]

How can you simultaneously hold that something is morally bankrupt without subscribing to a system of valuation? You might as well call thunderstorms morally bankrupt.

I have touched upon my approach to virtue ethics a time or two already. I think what is good for human flourishing can be tied to our psychology (which is objective), and that the way that you behave will influence the way you are. The fundamental values of Christianity--love, mercy, and grace--do seem to lead to a qualifiably better life than being bogged down by hatred and vengeance, so I am deeply suspicious of any version of Christianity that does not fully encourage those traits.

You crack me up.

 

[Silmarien]

You crack me up.

I guess you're all for stewing in resentment, then. Have fun with that.

 

[apogee]

What’s so silly about it, then?

Really?...

All motivations are ultimately hedonistic, even seemingly altruistic acts, which is why the ice cream example is such an easy illustration. We're all motivated by carrots and sticks, sticks being painful consequences we avoid and carrots being rewards that feel good, which we pursue.

Feel free to point it out.

Honestly?...

I can't tell whether you're a Dawkinsian or a Calvinist, either way all you really doing there is negating the very concept of selfishness.... by making it synonymous with it's antonym.... and similarly drawing the conclusion that altruistic acts are really just selfish ones tends to render hedonism even more meaningless than it already is (lets face it's inherently pretty meaningless), because it incorporates the selfless denial of pleasure, for the sake of a greater (higher?) pleasure. I mean I get it, I really do but it's just a bit silly.

Is that pointy enough?

 

[gaara4158]

Really?...





Honestly?...



Is that pointy enough?

I understand you find it silly, but its silliness is not evident to me. Please explain how you feel you can so easily dismiss my position.

 

[bhsmte]

I guess you're all for stewing in resentment, then. Have fun with that.

LOL

 

[apogee]

I understand you find it silly, but its silliness is not evident to me. Please explain how you feel you can so easily dismiss my position.

Fair enough...I'll try

lets take a look at the statement

All motivations are ultimately hedonistic

If you define Hedonism as the self-centered pursuit of pleasure (or something similar...by all means pick your own definition) and then attempt to extend this to include all actions, even those that would appear to be motivated by the antithesis of Hedonism (I'm going to say altruism, but you can just say anti-hedonism if you prefer...or anything else really).

Then you are not just asserting the altruism does not exist, you are also asserting that Hedonism has no antithesis.

So....perhaps you can correct me but if you can have a Thesis that has no Antithesis, then I'm kinda thinking what you've got here kinda looks a bit like a Tautology....or something very similar...but perhaps you can help me out here.

Perhaps we should just adjust this statement to:

All motivations are ultimately motivated

 

[gaara4158]

Fair enough...I'll try

lets take a look at the statement

All motivations are ultimately hedonistic

If you define Hedonism as the self-centered pursuit of pleasure (or something similar...by all means pick your own definition) and then attempt to extend this to include all actions, even those that would appear to be motivated by the antithesis of Hedonism (I'm going to say altruism, but you can just say anti-hedonism if you prefer...or anything else really).

Then you are not just asserting the altruism does not exist, you are also asserting that Hedonism has no antithesis.

So....perhaps you can correct me but if you can have a Thesis that has no Antithesis, then I'm kinda thinking what you've got here kinda looks a bit like a Tautology....or something very similar...but perhaps you can help me out here.

Perhaps we should just adjust this statement to:

All motivations are ultimately motivated

I only raised the point because my basis for morality was being criticized as hedonistic, which I don’t find to be a meaningful criticism for the exact reason you just stated. I don’t recognize any antithesis for hedonism. Maybe you can provide me with a definition of hedonism that doesn’t implicitly capture every human motivation?

 

[Silmarien]

I only raised the point because my basis for morality was being criticized as hedonistic, which I don’t find to be a meaningful criticism for the exact reason you just stated. I don’t recognize any antithesis for hedonism. Maybe you can provide me with a definition of hedonism that doesn’t implicitly capture every human motivation?

Were we having the same conversation? You had specifically asked me to explain why I thought meaning could not exist without an objective basis, and so I did. This was never intended as a criticism of your own basis of morality (you actually have one, which as far as I'm concerned, puts you leagues ahead of some of the others in this thread). That said, unless we do think that the ideal moral utopia would be the one where everyone is drugged out of their mind and in a constant state of bliss, there is a problem with a hedonistic theory of morality, if by hedonism we mean pleasure for its own sake.

One problem here is the assumption of a materialistic ontology whereby everything is reduced to reward and punishment. Things are only "good" or "bad" insofar as they grant us costs or benefits of some sort, physical or psychological. What is good has to be a matter of hedonism--pleasure for its own sake--because the ontology allows no other option. But what if you turn it around and say that correct moral behavior grants us pleasure of a higher sort because that behavior is in and of itself good for us? We do not seek it in order that we may thereby take advantage of some reward that comes attached to it, but seeking it is itself the reward.

I would not consider this hedonistic in the same sense. But if you're thinking exclusively in materialistic terms, your options tend to get limited in a way that leads to chocolate ice cream and opiate paradises. I would have expected these things to be horrifying to anyone, but it would appear otherwise.

 

[Moral Orel]

I have touched upon my approach to virtue ethics a time or two already. I think what is good for human flourishing can be tied to our psychology (which is objective), and that the way that you behave will influence the way you are. The fundamental values of Christianity--love, mercy, and grace--do seem to lead to a qualifiably better life than being bogged down by hatred and vengeance, so I am deeply suspicious of any version of Christianity that does not fully encourage those traits.

Objective? Human flourishing is a subjective preference for starters. Heck, whatever you mean by it is going to be subjective as other people who also value "human flourishing" are going to disagree what even that means. "Qualifiably better"? Better how? At what subjective preference is it better at achieving? Weren't you the one who asked me why "health" is "good"? You can't have objective values without assuming them. And even if you assume some values are objective, how do you know what they are? Could it be via subjective preference for the things you feel are good?

 

[Silmarien]

Human flourishing is a subjective preference for starters.

I would not deny that. If you want to shove your hand in a fire, go ahead. Nobody is stopping you. There will be consequences, though.

At the very least, we seem to have evolved in a way that makes certain behaviors psychologically healthy for us and others harmful. If we are wired in such a way, and I see good reason to think that we are, that is an objective fact about our brains, not a matter of subjective preference. There's been some scientific research done in this field--if you're interested, Vaillant's Spiritual Evolution is a good read. (Despite the title, it is secular.)

I think this is the best a moral realist can do while sticking to an atheistic ontology. A theist can get much further, but at the end of the day, you can choose whether you want to care about your own moral character or not. This is why I have no problem with the concept of damnation.

Could it be via subjective preference for the things you feel are good?

Honestly, I don't think so. You can like ice cream, but you can't make it good for you. Similarly, you can like killing people, but you're going to turn yourself into a sick shadow of a human being if you become a murderer.

 

[Moral Orel]

Honestly, I don't think so. You can like ice cream, but you can't make it good for you. Similarly, you can like killing people, but you're going to turn yourself into a sick shadow of a human being if you become a murderer.

I looked at your post too fast. I thought the first part was another bit for bhsmte, so I didn't read it at all.

 

[Moral Orel]

At the very least, we seem to have evolved in a way that makes certain behaviors psychologically healthy for us and others harmful. If we are wired in such a way, and I see good reason to think that we are, that is an objective fact about our brains, not a matter of subjective preference. There's been some scientific research done in this field--if you're interested, Vaillant's Spiritual Evolution is a good read. (Despite the title, it is secular.)

I think this is the best a moral realist can do while sticking to an atheistic ontology. A theist can get much further, but at the end of the day, you can choose whether you want to care about your own moral character or not. This is why I have no problem with the concept of damnation.

I had to think about this one quite a bit. If we consider that pleasure is desirable and suffering is to be avoided, basically universally, that opens up a whole new level of intersubjectivity I hadn't considered. And there are behaviors and attitudes that are objectively more likely to result in diminished psychological suffering and increased emotional contentedness. So when we try to formulate the best methods for furthering our values, which we need to agree on in advance, virtually everyone agrees on this basis.

But that isn't actual objectivity. It's objectively true that we evolved a certain way, but it isn't objectively good that we evolved the way we did. True, certain behaviors are objectively more likely to result in psychological health, but we still can't demonstrate that psychological health is good objectively. I still don't see a way to escape subjectivity being at the core of human experience, but from a pragmatic viewpoint, this level of intersubjectivity is quite useful.

 

[Silmarien]

I had to think about this one quite a bit. If we consider that pleasure is desirable and suffering is to be avoided, basically universally, that opens up a whole new level of intersubjectivity I hadn't considered. And there are behaviors and attitudes that are objectively more likely to result in diminished psychological suffering and increased emotional contentedness. So when we try to formulate the best methods for furthering our values, which we need to agree on in advance, virtually everyone agrees on this basis.

But that isn't actual objectivity. It's objectively true that we evolved a certain way, but it isn't objectively good that we evolved the way we did. True, certain behaviors are objectively more likely to result in psychological health, but we still can't demonstrate that psychological health is good objectively. I still don't see a way to escape subjectivity being at the core of human experience, but from a pragmatic viewpoint, this level of intersubjectivity is quite useful.

Perhaps the problem is that you do not understand moral realism. The point is that moral concepts are rationally based and refer to things outside of our personal preferences--a moral realist does not need to believe that there are objective moral truths floating around in the aether somewhere (though some do in fact believe this). To use my favorite analogy again, you can argue that shoving your hand into a fire is not an inherently bad thing to do, but nobody in their right mind is going to hold that there is no difference between burning yourself and not burning yourself aside from subjective personal preference.

Atheists have been trying to reconceptualize morality in a way that can be defended on a naturalistic ontology for centuries now. A lot of what they have come up with does seem to work, at least up to a certain point. I would agree that if atheism is true, psychological health is not good in and of itself, though--this is the void that I keep saying exists at the heart of atheism. Nothing is valuable in and of itself. Under other ontologies that do not draw the line between subjectivity and objectivity in quite the same manner, this void is not present. Atheism chops up reality in a very specific way and ends up assuming a void that it cannot prove actually exists. You can say that the burden of proof is on the other side, but if your default position is nihilism, you cannot complain when people point out that this is in fact what atheism amounts to.

 

[gaara4158]

Were we having the same conversation? You had specifically asked me to explain why I thought meaning could not exist without an objective basis, and so I did. This was never intended as a criticism of your own basis of morality (you actually have one, which as far as I'm concerned, puts you leagues ahead of some of the others in this thread). That said, unless we do think that the ideal moral utopia would be the one where everyone is drugged out of their mind and in a constant state of bliss, there is a problem with a hedonistic theory of morality, if by hedonism we mean pleasure for its own sake.

One problem here is the assumption of a materialistic ontology whereby everything is reduced to reward and punishment. Things are only "good" or "bad" insofar as they grant us costs or benefits of some sort, physical or psychological. What is good has to be a matter of hedonism--pleasure for its own sake--because the ontology allows no other option. But what if you turn it around and say that correct moral behavior grants us pleasure of a higher sort because that behavior is in and of itself good for us? We do not seek it in order that we may thereby take advantage of some reward that comes attached to it, but seeking it is itself the reward.

I would not consider this hedonistic in the same sense. But if you're thinking exclusively in materialistic terms, your options tend to get limited in a way that leads to chocolate ice cream and opiate paradises. I would have expected these things to be horrifying to anyone, but it would appear otherwise.

I’m probably communicating poorly due to my limited time to reply here, but what I mean to do is defend hedonism as the ultimate motivation for all actions, not necessarily a basis for morality. Hedonism doesn’t directly inform us as to what is moral, but it does answer the question as to why we should act morally. I don’t have a huge problem with your virtue ethics. I might need more help seeing how it’s paradoxical under a naturalistic worldview, though. It may not feel good to force down a kale salad, but people only do so in order to preserve their health, which helps them avoid undesirable consequences and enables them to pursue more pleasurable indulgences for a longer time. I would consider this a hedonistic motivation for engaging in something that’s not itself hedonic. I’m not seeing a paradox here.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Presumably only because you subjectively agree with him, in which case it seems like it's your own subjective disapproval that is important to you, not his. A Calvinist would have no reason to listen to him, since he has offered nothing of real content.

You presume incorrectly. I find as much relevance with people who disagree with me as those who agree with me.

And I'm not a Calvinist...

 

[Silmarien]

You presume incorrectly. I find as much relevance with people who disagree with me as those who agree with me.

So what? Then it is simply your subjective preference to care about what anyone else has to say, and it is not objectively better or worse than not caring. In contrast, I'm not really interested in the moral opinions of any relativist. If they cannot be bothered to look for an actual foundation for their moral belief system, I see no value in anything they have to say.

When you're trying to communicate with people who disagree with you, you need to bring more to the table than your personal feelings. So if you're going to walk up to a Calvinist and tell them that their theology "feels" unfair to you, the outcome of that conversation is going to be pretty predictable. And you won't be right, because there is no right.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

So what?

You initially said, specifically:

"You're just stating your own subjective disapproval that is completely irrelevant to anyone else."

I'm pointing out that you're wrong to presuppose what anyone else thinks...

That's "so what"...

 

[Silmarien]

You initially said, specifically:

"You're just stating your own subjective disapproval that is completely irrelevant to anyone else."

I'm pointing out that you're wrong to presuppose what anyone else thinks...

That's "so what"...

I mean that objectively speaking, if someone offers an opinion with no content to it except emotion, there is nothing there that would be relevant to anyone else. If you want to subjectively care about it, you're free to do so, but I don't see anything compelling you to.

Though I suppose if enough people subjectively disapproved of something and were able to maneuver themselves into a position of power to enforce their irrational opinions upon others, that would be relevant to other people. So yeah, I guess you're right in that subjective disapproval matters at least in a situation where everything is a power game. Might makes right morality.