Originally posted by avalanchethecatThe net result is that you can't answer the question.
...SHORTENED... As I tried to explain, I view morality and ethics as dependent upon context and not a series of fixed laws, so the question as posed is unanswerable according to my framework.
Originally posted by JS357There is much more that can be said about this, but I only want to express the fact that the utility and power of morality as a system of regulating human behavior is not diminished by acknowledging its grounding in convention.
I don't understand this reluctance to acknowledge the very real reasons, when we are discussing it rationally, to conclude that morality is grounded in convention. Humans are intelligent, language-using social animals. The conventions in which morality are grounded are conventions upon which societies depend, to enable the expression of two essential human nee ...[text shortened]... ate what it would want of us, and test the truth of our approximations in our daily lives.
I don't think there's any doubt that social convention is valuable. But what, after all, is objectively true about social convention? (And by objectively I mean, mind-independent—i.e., a behavior being wrong or right whether or not social convention deems it to be so or whether or not any one person believes it to be so.) That there are basic moral tenets shared cross-culturally in itself doesn't seem like enough to establish objectivity. Something may be right or wrong for us, as human beings, but, on atheistic materialism, why should we think objective moral values supervene on our behaviors rather than on the behaviors of members of a different species? Lions and tigers and bears, etc. Further, it seems to me that just because a certain social contract is beneficial to human beings (enhancing freedom and security), even if it is established in universal moral perception, doesn't establish objectivity. Especially if we consider moral perception merely the by-product of socio-biological evolution.
But this belief does not make it so. Even if there were such a source, all we can do is approximate what it would want of us, and test the truth of our approximations in our daily lives.
I don't mean to argue that belief in God is essential for establishing what is right and wrong. What I would argue is that God is essential for there to be objective moral values and duties.
Originally posted by LemonJelloThanks for taking the time to explain my error. Once again, I am in your debt.
[b]I guess I'm just skeptical of the possibility of establishing moral obligation based on the 'is' statements of science. I'm sure professional philosophers have concocted elaborate and subtle theories showing how that is accomplished, I just don't see how any of them could ultimately succeed.
There must be some confusion here. To say that an at ...[text shortened]... under the impression that you do not suffer from exactly the same "problem"? Ha![/b]
Originally posted by epiphinehasI believe morality is all about living socially and is a by-product of socio-biological evolution. But I am not convinced that this does not make it objective.
I don't mean to argue that belief in God is essential for establishing what is right and wrong.
What I would argue is that God is essential for there to be objective moral values and duties.
And I would argue that:
1. There are many other possible ways to make morals objective. Maybe they are a brute fact, maybe there is some universal 'book of morals' on Mars. The choice of God as the universal rule maker seems arbitrary.
2. That it is not essential that morals be objective in the manner you are arguing.
So, in your opinion, does God also have a moral code for each species of animal? Do plants too have a moral code set by God?
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Originally posted by bbarrHonestly, I'm not sure why you think that, as stopping points go, God is the least arbitrary.
Euthyphro-type dilemmas concern explanatory priority; by themselves they do not generate any regresses (infinite or otherwise). For a regress, you'd need some ancillary assumptions. Consider a Euthyphro-type dilemma applied to the view that it is general social agreement that determines the content of morality. The question would be "Is X good because we al what is good, reasonable, beautiful, etc. can be settled on scientific grounds.
Here's how my thinking goes: God is the greatest conceivable being—and since it is better to be the paradigm of goodness rather than to merely exemplify goodness—if there is a supreme moral standard, then God is it.
But suppose I am wondering why I should be a good person. DCT would have me believe that, ultimately, I should be a good person because the term 'good' is simply defined as that which coheres with the character of some entity. But why should I care about that? The DCT account of morality is arbitrary from the point of view of a moral inquirer who is looking for practical reasons.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'coheres with the character of some entity'. The reason I brought up the character of God was just to show that it is conceivable that God's commands aren't arbitrary. The command to "love your neighbor as yourself" I would say is independently justifiable and practical. What it lacks is objectivity without the divine command. I would say the moral inquirer would have less reason, in the absence of God, to be obligated to be a good person. Yes, we can establish practical reasons for being a good person, but not the obligation to be one.
I guess I prefer my moral theories to have stopping points that relate to areas of natural human concern (e.g., love, fellowship, compassion, trust, respect, etc.)... I think morality is essentially for us, and must ultimately end up being explained and justified on the basis of that about which, by nature, we are disposed to deeply care.
I don't mean to argue that belief in God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics. I would argue that God is necessary for moral values and duties to be objective, in the sense of having a reality independent of our moral perceptions.
Originally posted by epiphinehasDon't you see how that descends into circularity? 'greatness' and 'goodness' are essentially arbitrary because you are defining them as standards based on God and God as the ultimate of those standards.
Here's how my thinking goes: God is the greatest conceivable being—and since it is better to be the paradigm of goodness rather than to merely exemplify goodness—if there is a supreme moral standard, then God is it.
The reason I brought up the character of God was just to show that it is conceivable that God's commands aren't arbitrary.
I am not sure that it is conceivable. Not by your argument anyway. If they are not arbitrary then they necessarily depend on some greater truth which would contradict your definition of God and your claim that God is the source of morality.
The command to "love your neighbor as yourself" is independently justifiable and practical.
What if it wasn't? What if Gods commands turned out to be unjustifiable and impractical?
I would say the moral inquirer would have less reason, in the absence of God, to be obligated to be a good person.
Why? Surely that would still be for practical reasons? Self preservation (a better afterlife) being the primary one.
Yes, we can establish practical reasons for being a good person, but not the obligation to be one.
There are no obligatory reasons. I have sinned, therefore I was not obliged not to.
I don't mean to argue that belief in God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics. I would argue that God is necessary for moral values and duties to be objective, in the sense of having a reality independent of our moral perceptions.
And you try to get away with this by defining God as the objective moral standard. But by adding a single other property to God, your argument collapses. Why for example would it be impossible for a being that is the paradigm of goodness but not the 'greatest conceivable being' in some other respect? (and therefore not God by your definition).
Originally posted by FreakyKBHWhat you are essentially saying (in contrast) is that you cannot answer the OP, since you--- unlike virtually every other conscious and self-aware person on the planet--- have no idea regarding existence's origins, nor have you ever considered the topic long enough to arrive at even a working hypothesis.
[b]I do not profess to know the answer to that question, and I withhold judgment on the topic pending what I would take to be sufficient evidence to warrant a particular judgment this way or that.
I have not attributed you with a claim to know; I have insisted that you have an idea about how existence came to be. What you are essentially saying (in c ...[text shortened]... mistry." For someone such as yourself, this whole exercise is a non sequitur.[/b]
No, that is not what I essentially said. Nor does it follow from what I said.
I already addressed the first question in your OP way back on page 1. The question has no actual relevancy to the lives of atheists, since, again, no atheist worth his weight in salt would claim that everything ultimately must be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry. Such a claim is simply beyond absurd. Please refer back to my first post on the very first page of this thread for some reasons why such a claim is beyond absurd.
If all you are trying to show is that a person who is committed to such a claim is not in position to ground morality, then I would probably agree. But this is hardly interesting because, again, such a claim is bonkers. And regardless, again, it is simply complete fantasy that atheists are committed to such a claim.
There are basically two camps in this world, relative to existence. One camp claims a supernatural cause, the other camp says it all has a naturalistic explanation....the question posed here is how the latter camp accounts for morals from a strictly materialistic starting point.
No, that's called a false dichotomy. There are many others who do not make a positive claim either way on the matter. Further, there are many who do not think all things have explanation. Speaking for myself, the more I think about the principle of sufficient reason, the more I find it implausible.
At any rate, that is an aside. The bigger problems you have are contained in what follows. First, I had asked if you would provide some actual reasons in support of the idea that one needs to have some account of cosmological origins in order to describe what a moral value is; whereas your response here provides exactly zero such reasons. Second, what does materialism have to do with anything here? I guess your question is something like, how does the latter account for the normative from a purely descriptive starting point? If so, the answer is simple: they don't. Nobody does that, because it is not something that can be done. This is something bbarr already mentioned with the "free normative premise". Just like you take this on, so do atheists. Nothing mysterious about that.
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Originally posted by jaywillJaywill, I listened carefully to the quote you highlighted from the video. The claim "everything can be explained on the sole basis of the laws of physics and chemistry" does not appear in the quote; nor is it entailed by anything in the quote; nor does it really much resemble anything in the quote. So, I am at a loss as to what point you were trying to make here.
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Nobody I know claims that "everything can be explained on the sole basis of the laws of physics and chemistry".
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Listen to the quotation about one minute into this lecture.
A professor of biological science at Cornell University:
The lecture -
Has Science Made Beli ?v=vGV7eSuU8ow&feature=related
(no, I don't care if you saw it before, whoever you are )
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Originally posted by bbarrAgain, where did I deny this?
At least some of the assumptions needed to "make sense" of any anything at all, including our cognition, are, at the end of the day, going to be normative. It's not like there are a set of assumptions we need to make sense of the descriptive, and a different set we need to make sense of what we should do or believe. And that's because any attempt to give an there are some dealing with reasons for belief and some dealing with reasons for action.
It seems here that you want me to believe additional normative assumptions just because I believe in some other normative assumptions that are not directly about ethics. This strikes me as a weird attempt to justify accepting any of those assumptions. If I had needed some normative assumptions that a realist doesn't, then that might be an argument, but I don't. If I do, please tell me which ones.
But it gets worse. In the end, I'm faced with a buffet of possible normative assumptions and I need to pick at least one or more. How am I going to do that? I'm going to have to pick the ones I...prefer! So moral realism seems to me nothing else than projection of preferences into certain premises that would then allow me to claim that there is such a thing as good/evil independent of subjective preferences. Surely you see the problem I now have with it. Such a person's ethical views then don't seem objective at all if I dig deep enough.
Originally posted by epiphinehasYou seem to think it is important to establish the objectivity of morality. I see nothing wrong with not doing that. I don't see moral statements as truth statements, I see them as exhortations. Some might call them commandments or principles.
[b]There is much more that can be said about this, but I only want to express the fact that the utility and power of morality as a system of regulating human behavior is not diminished by acknowledging its grounding in convention.
I don't think there's any doubt that social convention is valuable. But what, after all, is objectively true about so ...[text shortened]... ld argue is that God is essential for there to be objective moral values and duties.[/b]
God giving us an exhortation or command or principle to live by doesn't change it to an objective truth. Of course, it might increase some people's degree of commitment, to believe it is God-given, and we do enshrine our moral codes in our religions, in part at least, for that reason.
There seem to be some stereotypes being assumed here.
I am not arguing on the basis of 'atheistic materialism.' I do think the atheistic POV should be presented and considered fairly and without bias. The idea that we have some sort of immaterial aspect needn't be rejected in order to consider a nontheistic point of view or study morality nontheistically. If an immaterial aspect is implied by the evidence, we should develop a theory for its role.
Members of other species exhibit some of the signs of emotional reactions to behavior that we do, like signs of guilt and shame. I see no reason to deny that they have moral codes, to whatever extent the evidence warrants.
Also, I don't think moral perception is a by-product, I think it's an essential part of being an intelligent, language-using social animal.
Originally posted by epiphinehas"I don't mean to argue that belief in God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics. I would argue that God is necessary for moral values and duties to be objective, in the sense of having a reality independent of our moral perceptions."
[b]Honestly, I'm not sure why you think that, as stopping points go, God is the least arbitrary.
Here's how my thinking goes: God is the greatest conceivable being—and since it is better to be the paradigm of goodness rather than to merely exemplify goodness—if there is a supreme moral standard, then God is it.
But suppose I am ...[text shortened]... be objective, in the sense of having a reality independent of our moral perceptions.
What would be the implications and effects of moral values and duties not having a reality independent of our moral perceptions? (Based on your distinction, this is not the same question as "What would be the implications and effects of people not believing God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics."😉
Originally posted by JS357edit: RHP makes a quotation mark-parenthesis into a smily.
"I don't mean to argue that belief in God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics. I would argue that God is necessary for moral values and duties to be objective, in the sense of having a reality independent of our moral perceptions."
What would be the implications and effects of moral values and duties not having a reality independent of our mora ...[text shortened]... and effects of people not believing God is necessary for establishing a system of ethics."😉