Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote:

Harbal wrote:Something as self evident as that hardly requires any further evidence.

Here's a good axiom: when someone tells you something is "self-evident," you can be quite certain he knows it's not.

Agreed, self-evident, isn't.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Ginkgo wrote:Ethics is a product of the human mind.

What evidence convinces you of that? I'm assuming it's not just an Atheist presupposition you are floating there...it would have some evidence, no?

The evidence would seem to be that it is assumed that animals do not have ethics, so it is left that ethics must be only for humans. Therefore ethics is a human construct, theistic or atheistic doesn't seem to matter.

thedoc wrote:The evidence would seem to be that it is assumed that animals do not have ethics, so it is left that ethics must be only for humans. Therefore ethics is a human construct, theistic or atheistic doesn't seem to matter.

Yes, maybe that's the assumption: but it's manifestly a bad one, if it is.

Of course animals don't have abstract ethical conceptions, whoever practical behaviours they may exhibit. And of course humans do have such conceptions. But WHY they do, when nothing else does, is the important question. That, and how can they justify such conceptions, if they are merely a contingent byproduct of human psychology.

If ethics were merely a "human construct," which would mean "made up by humans, and having no other origin," then those ethics would actually not be morally binding on, or obligatory to anyone -- Theist or Atheist. There would be no grounding for them, and no justification to defend them. And just as Nietzsche said, they would be nothing but an attempt by some people to gain power over others -- with no legitimacy at all, once someone had seen through them, as Nietzsche claimed to have done.

Really, they would be just another kind of conceptual delusion.

thedoc wrote:

Greta wrote:We do not know the activities of the earliest humans.

Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

Actually archaeologists have discovered evidence that points to the earliest humans having some religious beliefs. Animals have been accepted as having no morality at all, so any supposition about animal morality is anthropomorphic at best.

I am aware of the Australopithecene burials. What do you see as the essential difference between Australopithecene and elephant burial grounds? The answer is not "anthropomorphism".

The seeds of morality stem from social living, and that was not invented by humans. Humans created a developed and extended morality, but many social animal groups hold their own taboos, expectations and some, like elephants, engage in rituals.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Greta wrote:Why don't I believe in God? I find the anthropomorphism terribly unlikely. As for the pantheistic and panentheistic versions, I don't know, hence agnosticism. I cannot make myself believe in those more logical versions, though, even if I find the idea appealing. I simply don't know and nor does anyone else. Dogs don't know either, and the difference between our relative levels of ignorance may be less than we imagine.

I understand that. I think that, left to our own devices, we'd all be equally blind on such an issue. And under those circumstances, we'd all really be rational to be agnostics...for how could we ever know anything about a Supreme Being that had made no gesture whatsoever to reveal Himself to us?

Why assume there is a supreme being? Why assume that it is male? Maybe, maybe not. No one knows. You too.

Immanuel Can wrote:

I take your point, though that raises a question. What of your belief? Did you consciously sit down and decide that, all in all, the idiot goat herders of the middle east during the Iron Age actually got it right while cultures in other places and times all got it wrong?

At one time, I don't know what I really believed. I'd heard of God, of course; but to tell the truth, it seemed rather distant and irrelevant from my lived experience. My mind changed in the second year of university. Thomas Hardy, the agnostic novelist, had taken me one step. But others...Hobbes, Nietzsche, and some of the early Postmodernists took me a second step. They got me sad enough to actually try to read my Bible...just one book of it, just once, for myself. I really didn't know when I started that I would find anything.

It was searching on my own that convinced me...much to my surprise...that there was something really ethically unique about Jesus Christ. That intrigued and startled me...but it put me down a path that's led me far.

Basically, you found that observations of humans and reality rather depressing so you instead joined with people who'd decided to create their own happier reality together.

For me, Jesus, plus Horace and Osiris on which he was based, Buddha, Mohammed and so forth are examples of a kind of posited "superman". The laws of averages suggest that sometimes people must pop up with exemplary characteristics in almost all respects.

Humans have this longing for the ideal, the perfect. It draws us and drives us. We speak with awe of deities and examplars who embody the control and capability to which we aspire. Maybe in a few billion years God will unambiguously exist through the endless striving to this goal? Or maybe that's how log it take for God to grow up? Or gestate??

If the universe is a 4D Minkwoski manifold (or whatever) then the ultimate evolved forms are already existent in a sense, just not accessible to us, but they would lie in our very distant future ...

// end Pt 1. TBC

Immanuel Can wrote:

Could you parse the difference between auto-pilot and automatic. They strike me as synonyms.

I guess I would say "automatic" is when something just happens, and one wasn't in control of it. "Auto-pilot" is when a person could be in control of what they're thinking, but either doesn't bother or doesn't want to be. I think "auto-pilot" is the condition to be avoided. The "automatic" can't be.

A very line there.

Immanuel Can wrote:

I don't think it through that much - much more automatic It never occurs to me that I might change someone's views. For me the aim and challenge is to comprehend what's being said and articulating my internal/logical response.

That's actually a pretty terrific goal. But they're not mutually exclusive, I think. To argue is to refine one's thinking. It's also to test just how good another person's idea is, so as to decide if it belongs as an addition to one's own catalogue of ideas. Those are harmonious goals, I think.

The other thing I wanted to ask. You seemingly rejected philosophy for its gloomy and abstracted lack of efficacy in "real life". So you embraced religion instead and that apparently suits you better. So why have to "backslid" to philosophy? What draws you? Why not develop theistic ideas with peers on religious forums rather than struggle with those who think differently?

Immanuel Can wrote:

Remember - social animals. You are aware of the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment?

Yes. But as Hume pointed out, that's only an "is," not an "ought." Capuchins "happen" to behave in a certain kind of way -- that does not suggest that they are "good" if they do, and "bad" if they do not. And it doesn't say they have an moral duty that means they "ought" to behave in what we humans regard as an even-handed or just way. They're Capuchins. Capuchins do what Capuchins do. That's all animal behaviourism can really say.

What makes us humans better is that we don't have to follow our programming. We don't have to be on "auto-pilot."

No, it is a classic example of an "ought" based on the idea of fairness.

"You gave the other monkey a grape for the task. You OUGHT to give me one too".

Humans have far less control than you assume too. We imagine ourselves with a control that we have never even come close to achieving. Yes, we have extra qualities - it does not need to be said, it's so obvious - but one could easily describe humans as "just doing what humans do".

Immanuel Can wrote:

Harbal wrote:Something as self evident as that hardly requires any further evidence.

Here's a good axiom: when someone tells you something is "self-evident," you can be quite certain he knows it's not.

Then you've forced me to admit that it's self evident you know what you're talking about.

Immanuel Can wrote:

thedoc wrote:The evidence would seem to be that it is assumed that animals do not have ethics, so it is left that ethics must be only for humans. Therefore ethics is a human construct, theistic or atheistic doesn't seem to matter.

Yes, maybe that's the assumption: but it's manifestly a bad one, if it is.

It's certainly a manifestly bad one for you being as it's a rational deduction and contradicts your position.

Greta wrote: If the universe is a 4D Minkwoski manifold (or whatever) then the ultimate evolved forms are already existent in a sense, just not accessible to us, but they would lie in our very distant future ...

This statement reminds me of a thought experiment. It's assumed by theists that only God could have created the universe but is this necessarily so? How do we know the likes of us wouldn't be capable of it a hundred thousand or a million years hence? Knowing the recipe we extract a critical amount of vacuum, spice it up according to a Standard Model perfectly understood, heat to a trillion degrees, wait for a membrane to form and then let it cool and expand going its merry way creating in its wake the possibilities allowed by its inception.

Would we be gods for having accomplished a seeming miracle beyond any miracle ever accomplished in the annals of history as currently recorded? I think not! It's been reported a few days ago that scientists are now experimenting with reversing the aging process...within limits of course. Some success with mice has already occurred so clearly one can see the road ahead without being certain what's at the end of it.

It's amazing how often humans have preempted god during the last 500 years, a process that's accelerating at warp speed. If there were such an entity as we imagine it to be, shouldn't IT be getting pissed off by now? What God is or supposed to be has never been truly defined. It's definition is only a construct of the imagination required to do, To Be, whatever IT was designed for or more blatantly created by expediency for the sake of power.

...btw, the questions only refer to out-loud thinking, perusing possibilities and not meant to be overt.

uwot wrote:Me: I don't see how you can combine a moral exhortation with an '...unless necessary' or the other get-outs. It would turn it into something that was situation specific.
Do not remove someone's appendix, unless necessary springs to mind. Do not murder Archduke Ferdinand's assassin. Do not abort Adolf Hitler. If you do not apply your judgement to specific situations, are you any more a moral agent than the bees and ants which you say are slaves?

If these were moral questions, we would ask 'why shouldn't you do that?' And our reply would relate to a general principle. Do not kill (anyone), do not (ever) cut people open for no good reason.

Doing that which best enhances other people's quality of life, or that which does least to damage it, is how some moral philosophers have defined 'good'. I think it is a worthwhile definition; a good person is one who acts in a way that they judge will achieve that. This is not some trascendental, or god approved 'good', it is the demonstrable benefit to your fellow sentient beings.

That we should enhance other people's quality of life is itself a transcendental value. Again, we would ask 'why should I do that?' To simply repeat 'it enhances their life' would be circular.

Anyone can believe in fairness, justice, kindness, even morality as transcendent values. Nobody is compelled to believe they created and sustained by a supernatural being.

Certainly, but my point is that in both cases they have chosen to believe in something immaterial, something for which there can be no evidence. If we are believing what we want to believe, rather than that for which we have physical evidence, why not incorporate a supernatural being if that works better for you?

There are any number of pathologies which make choosing to be empathic impossible. Can you choose to be the sort of person that chooses to be empathic?

In the cases where people are judged to be incapable of showing empathy, we usually excuse them morally. We say they are mad, not bad. But if I exhort somebody to act morally, then I must be assuming that they have the capacity for choice.

Me: Why not simply disown morality altogether? Say; 'Yes, all moral systems are quasi-religious, and that is why (as atheists) we think they are all nonsense'. (As some philosophers have done)

Who do you have in mind? I can't think of any major philosopher who has said that.

Logical positivism for example. It treats moral utterances as emotivism. When I say 'Eating meat is bad' this means 'Eating meat? Yuck!'

Unless we think 'bad' and 'good' are physical qualities, i.e. exist in some physical or transcendental sense, what else can they be except expressions of our personal feelings. And if they are no more than personal feelings, why would we (rationally) think they should be binding on others?

Similarly, if we are determinists then we would recognise that the idea that any of us exercise choice is an illusion.

Greta wrote: I am aware of the Australopithecene burials. What do you see as the essential difference between Australopithecene and elephant burial grounds? The answer is not "anthropomorphism".

The seeds of morality stem from social living, and that was not invented by humans. Humans created a developed and extended morality, but many social animal groups hold their own taboos, expectations and some, like elephants, engage in rituals.

So far the "Elephants' graveyard" has been treated as untrue and akin to an urban legend because no-one has seen or found any verifiable evidence for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants'_graveyard

Also Elephants do not practice any rituals that cannot be accounted for by instinct, perhaps they do show some emotional characteristics, but you need to separate the anthropomorphism to be sure.

This damn thread is ridiculous beyond words. There's a debate going on here that is being conducted in the same way as one would expect the dark side of the Moon to be speculated about. We are not talking about a phenomenon who's presence or absence can only be inferred by something else, or that can only be established through logical analysis. Unless we are psychopaths we all know through first hand experience, theists and atheists alike, that we have a functioning morality, it's part of our psychology and is a compulsion. Most of us, if we saw an old man or woman fall over in the street, would go and help them. Not because of what our religion might say or what we believe God would want us to do, but because it would be our instinctive response to such a situation. I don't doubt that there are moral positions that are informed by religion, some of which, incidentally, are downright wrong, but we all have an "every day" morality and only an idiot would deny the possibility of it being present in the case of atheists.

[Edited by iMod]

Harbal wrote:Unless we are psychopaths we all know through first hand experience, theists and atheists alike, that we have a functioning morality, it's part of our psychology and is a compulsion. Most of us, if we saw an old man or woman fall over in the street, would go and help them. Not because of what our religion might say or what we believe God would want us to do, but because it would be our instinctive response to such a situation.

If it was really a compulsion, or instinctive, we would not see it as a moral issue. For example, we don't tell mothers 'It is bad to eat your baby!' because (assuming they are sane) they never want to do it. But we might say 'It is bad to steal' because even sane people may feel the impulse to do it, and because sometimes it might benefit them to steal.

And there are many instinctive responses that we do not regard as moral. We spend a lot of time teaching children not to do the things that come naturally to them. What's more, we look at whole societies and call them immoral and they do the same to us. History shows us that old men and women in the wrong pace and with the wrong ethnicity can find themselves in mass graves.

Londoner wrote: If it was really a compulsion, or instinctive, we would not see it as a moral issue. For example, we don't tell mothers 'It is bad to eat your baby!' because (assuming they are sane) they never want to do it. But we might say 'It is bad to steal' because even sane people may feel the impulse to do it, and because sometimes it might benefit them to steal.

And there are many instinctive responses that we do not regard as moral. We spend a lot of time teaching children not to do the things that come naturally to them. What's more, we look at whole societies and call them immoral and they do the same to us. History shows us that old men and women in the wrong pace and with the wrong ethnicity can find themselves in mass graves.

All this makes no difference because even if it is all correct it applies equally to theists and atheists. There is no difference between them as regards what drives there moral behaviour.

Greta wrote: Why assume there is a supreme being? Why assume that it is male? Maybe, maybe not. No one knows. You too.

My point precisely: it would be useless to assume. He would have to self-reveal in some way, or we'd all be guessing.

Basically, you found that observations of humans and reality rather depressing so you instead joined with people who'd decided to create their own happier reality together.

No. There were no "people." It was just me. And my decision was based on what I was reading and thinking by myself. To be perfectly honest, I didn't have a particular hankering for human company at that point.

But you're right about my observation of human beings and reality. I was also very impressed by the overwhelming emptiness of the answers I was being offered by some of the "best minds" of the human tradition. When it cam particularly to the issue of what is wrong with this world, they all seemed to go dusty on answers.

Humans have this longing for the ideal, the perfect. It draws us and drives us. We speak with awe of deities and examplars who embody the control and capability to which we aspire. Maybe in a few billion years God will unambiguously exist through the endless striving to this goal? Or maybe that's how log it take for God to grow up? Or gestate??

My issue was the opposite: from where does all this evil come...and not just the evil in the world, but all that is wrong with every individual person, including myself. I wanted somebody to talk boldly about that, but it seemed I was getting two kinds of answers: one was, "don't worry about it, it's just how it is" and the other was, "imagine it differently, and in particular, imagine it's not really as bad as you think, and it will all go away." I thought both of those answers, in all their forms, were really hollow. It seemed somehow morally cowardly to me to think of accepting such platitudes in place of real answers.

And I should add that I could see that the problem of evil isn't just a Theistic problem. It's a problem for everyone. Take Humanism, for example: how can we take seriously the idea of the "goodness of mankind" when the same ideology tells us that all the wars, rapes, murders and oppressions of human history come from exactly the same moral nature to which Humanism tells us to look for our hope? What is "evil," if we're all really "good"? Or take Materialism: it has to deny the very existence of anything as "evil," since all things are said to be contingent phenomena, just late and accidental products of natural laws. But how can one be troubled by seeing evil, and take solace in saying, "I'm going to pretend it's all a wash"?

Again, that's cowardice.

So thinking about what evil might be makes you look for answers. And if you aren't happy with pat answers, you've got to keep looking until you find something. Anyway, that's how I thought about it.