Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 7:20 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 4:50 pm
Well, you would be "playing God" if you then turned around and tried to impose a moral claim on another person. But I don't know that in the Atheist toolkit is the equipment to back any claim that even "playing God" is immoral.
There are people who don't do that, but most people try to get other people to do things based on a wide variety of justifications. Most are basing this on apriori or conclusions deduced from their apriori. There are some people who just go for what they want and know this, even if they don't generally frame it that way when arguing with others. But theists and atheists alike claim to have the right to get other people to do things or not do things based on a variety of justifications.
Well, if the Theistic view of reality is true, then Theists can ask people to share their ethical beliefs based on reality. But Atheism, even if it turned out to have the correct view of reality, would still have no such basis. It's view of reality says that there are no objective entities capable of warranting a moral axiom. So all they can do, then, is what Nietzsche said they would do: practice convincing people of a thing they regard as a deliberate deception, or force compliance. What they can't do is offer any justification grounded in a view of reality...especially their own.
Actually, virtue ethicists would refuse that summary of their view. They claim not to be an ethics concerned with action alone, but rather with how actions accumulate into an eventual revelation of general character.
Sure, but I've never met anyone who didn't justify that in part on consequences of having good citizens, good fathers or mothers, good consequences.
Virtue ethics is kind of a big deal in ethics right now. It would be worth finding out about that, even if you were still more convinced of deontology or consequentialism. I would agree with you that none of the secular ethics seem to be holding water -- including virtue ethics -- but if they sense you don't even know their line of thought, they'll be unlikely to be convinced by that sort of explanation in terms of deontology and consequentialism.
Just saying.
A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent.
You're not quite right about the third one, I have to admit: virtue ethics has more to it than a simple judgment about any action, whether "charitable and benevolent" or not. However, let that be.
The main point is that however often the three may agree, all three paradigms frequently
disagree about what the right thing to do is, and not in minor ways, either. And from that fact alone, if from no other, it's apparent that secular ethics is not resolving the question of morality.
They will go through Piaget stages also, regardless, and with this comes the intellectual idea that there are other minds/perspectives that they get on a cognitive level. And without the cognitive they can't have the empathetic.
I don't see that, at all. Cognitive doesn't have to come before "empathetic," and "empathetic" is often badly misguided. The Piagetian proposed stages are primarily developmental, rather than intellectual or even moral
per se, and both Piaget and Kohlberg and company recognized that most people don't actually ever, in their entire lives, get to the alleged "higher" stages of moral deveopment.
We are not born tabular rasa is two different ways: 1) different babies have different temperments and tendencies 2) children develop via internal shifts. They get as an unfolding of their biology changes in their understand of what is happening, including the understanding that other people experience different things and have perspectives.
Yep.
Children will want to get along with others. It's built into most children.
Some do, some don't. Female children generally turn out to be more socially motivated, and motivated much earlier, than male ones.
I think the tabula rasa idea and seeing the child as a kind of beast has caused all sorts of damage.
Honestly, I've never met a single person who genuinely thought either was true, so I don't think they've done much damage recently.
Pagan and indigenous religions are different. They still have judgments that certain parts of the self can never be integrated but in general are much more tolerant of desire and emotion.
We might ask, "How has that worked out for them?"
Those religions and groups are coming back, with lots of adherants within the domintor cultures.
That's true, but it's a bad mistake.
Have you ever lived in a pagan culture? I have. You'd be surprised how astronmically far it is from the "noble savage" idea, the belief that ancient pagans just walked around whispering to trees and loving the environment. That life is indeed, "nasty, brutish and short," to clip Hobbes.
But sure, it didn't go so well for groups that did not treat their own members with the kind of internal mechanical dominance the large dominator cultures did.
"Dominance"? Well, tyranny is part of any strong culture, it's true: that's always a feature, because strong cultures overwhelm weak ones merely by being present with them, if by no deliberate colonization. But the more successful, vigorous, well-ordered and prosperous culture is likely to have the same effect: domination over ones that are unsuccessful, poorly-structured, technologically backward, devoid of authority, and so on. Some of that is just the triumph of the more successful over the less so.
Tolerance of desire and emotion within reasonable and sociable bounds is one thing, of course; pagan bacchanalia and blood lettings are quite another. There's very little you'll ever see that's so out of his own control as a pagan witchdoctor or acolyte in the throes of his pagan ecstacies.
Rational approachs to domination have outdone any pagan excesses.
Yes: so far. And good thing, too. Rational cultures are much easier for everybody to live in, and much more successful.
Pagans and indigenous groups never fully aimed at integration. But nothing approaches the cold-blooded violence created by the combination of rationality coupled with dominator religions and ideologies.
No, I'm sorry...that's not how it is. The bloodthirsty tribes of the ancient world certainly lacked the means to dominate on the scale modern cultures do; but it wasn't from any lack of wishing for it. Pagan cultures are "hot" with superstition, xenophobia, arrogance, male domination, warfare, ritual slaying, and so on; whenever they had a chance, those tribes conquered, enslaved, brutalized, tortured and abused their rivals with the kind of ferocity rarely seen now in our more modern "cooler" cultures.
That's how life "close to nature" actually looks: not at all like what the Left wants us to imagine nowadays, in their pro-environmental fantasies. If you live in a place like that for any bit of time, you really know that.
Civilizations are not built by indulgence, but by restraint, moderation, control of impulses.
And behind the scenes violence aimed at the weaker, slavery of various kinds etc.
Sometimes, some were, for sure. But slave economies turn out to be rather inefficient. There are much more effective ways to build a civilization, by doing things like educating women, expanding the franchise, giving wages, allowing prosperity for the masses, making technological innovations, opening up opportunities for enterprise...and these things have proved to be the building blocks of the modern world, not some "slavery" kind of arrangement.
But how do we know they're being "jailors," too? Isn't it possible that at least sometimes, some of those things are trying to "help" us to do the right thing, even if they often get it wrong?
Sure, in any given momen it may well be great that you suppress yourself. My criticism is aimed at the permanence this correctional system is set in place and further the lack of interest in or support for any approach to long term integration.
I'm sorry..."correctional system"? Are we talking about actual jails, or were you speaking metaphorically? I can't see that our jails have anything much to do directly with our economy.
Oh, absolutely. I think conscience is universal. Like everything else in human beings, it's imperfect; but one thing that seems universal is the fact of a conscience, whether in perfect order or not.
And given its ubiquity it's rather amazing how little we talk about guilt vs. regret for example.
Yes, quite so. It's all to easy for us to assume, because conscience makes us uncomfortable, that it's an enemy. But it's usually not. Sometimes it goes awry and burdens us with unearned guilt, it's true; but in general, it alerts us to the presence of a moral choice to which, perhaps, we have not been sufficiently attending up to now.
Yes, lots of guilt, at least partly conscious is one bad outcome. I think there are much more damaging chronic issues where we don't even know who we are and what we want because it took over so completely we don't even notice. The right often talks about virtue signaling, which was a spot on critique if often used in an oversimplifying way. But virtue signaling is not remotely restricted to the left. Conservatives/the right have virtue signaled just as much, just in their own ways, with overlap.
Well, guilt is not an easy thing to unpack. One can have unjustified guilt, but it can also be justified. And it would be very bad for any society to cultivate a total absence of guilt, given that there are actions people
should feel guilty about.
What we shouldn't do is just assume that all guilt is toxic and dysfunctional, and try to rid ourselves of it. Guilt is conscience whispering; and we ought to take our consciences very seriously.
We don't suggest people look at the splits inthemselves and consider integration.
This is what the virtue ethicists are going to say makes their view better than deontology or consequentialism. They claim that they DO pay attention to the integration of the total personality.
But they don't.
Well, they do. Whether it's
the right kind of attention they pay or not is the matter to dispute. Have they got the picture of what "good character" is pinned properly...
I like virtue ethics better, in the sense that it is aiming at a deeper sense. They want you deeply aligned with the values. In a sense a bit like how Jesus updated the 10 commandments. In that direction.
Theology has very interesting things to say about that, but I won't go into that unless you want to.
Sorry, got to start the work day.....
No problem. Thanks for the thoughts. I'm finding the conversation useful and fruitful, so thank you for that.
