I'm asking you to introspect with me our own sense of what is moral so we CAN determine the sources of it for our human species. You ARE an evolved human I assume. Who better to tell us what the experience of morality includes or excludes than us eh?
it is ALWAYS us. Everything is mediated through us and by us, consciously or unconsciously. That is just a fully developed view of cognition, unlike views where people think they will prove things and then do them. Those people have a pretty limited knowledge, or they constrict it artificially in order to feel as if they have only one choice of how to think. Decisions are not made for us. As Camus said, you can always choose, even the prisoner, even if it is only to dissent (well, that is basically what he said).
I still don't believe you act morally out of a sense of obligation to some authority.
like I said before, my processes are not in question, that is just anecdotal. I honestly think my ideology is slightly aberrant from the norm, in that I expect to choose in many aspects of life, not be convinced one way is the only way to think.
I mean we DO act this way with the law. We drive the speed limit and return library books on time because we are obeying rules set up by higher authorities. But that's not moral behavior. It's just being obedient, which is something totally different.
we can disobey, so there is always a moral factor. This disobedience, which is the central theme of the first part of the bible, is the thing you don't seem to be taking into account in your protestations.
I think a sociopath can reason his way to morality even without empathy. He may still afterall have a value for the common good--for the welfare of the group over the individual.
the sociopath by definition does not value the welfare of the group over themselves.
That doesn't necessarily require empathy. And given this inherent rationality of certain moral actions, it is certainly possible to choose them without having been told to by some higher authority.
and then there is the irrationality of certain moral actions. And THEN there is the rationality of both sides of a moral point, such as eating meat.
The problem we are having here is that we are talking about two or three things at once.
1 command (which we should drop from the discussion) although hopefully you get my first few paragraphs in this post, along with
2- biology - we can agree that humans act a certain way, partially due to biology, and partially consciously acting in a way which seems to be against biological drives. Having morality without taking into account that we are humans and have biological processes would be silly, so stop thinking I am doing that. I am just emphasizing those things that only humans do, because talking about animal morality is problematic, and once we start talking about the things we share with animals, we are getting away from morality, since animal morality would generally be considered anthropomorphism.
3 - relativism
It always strikes me that the same Jesus who said "love thine enemies" also believed and preached his soon return to earth with his angels to reek vengence upon all those who refused to worship him. Something a little hypocritical there to me.
this is a huge problem for the fundamentalists. Some famous theologian said, (can't remember who right now), paraphrase - I wouldn't say i am a universalist, but the alternative is too terrible to be true. I personally won't worship a god who tosses out most of humanity eternally, it just doesn't make sense - sounds more like a Kabbalah version of Jehovah I.e. a lower being. I would obey that god out of fear, if I possibly could, but couldn't worship it.
Just because an instinct can be resisted doesn't mean it still isn't an instinct. In a pack of wolves, one member may resist his pack instinct to cooperate with others and instead hunt and eat all for himself. Lone wolves they call them. Or I may fast for awhile in an attempt to lose weight, thus denying my instinct for eating for awhile. Instincts can be resisted and overridden by opposing instincts and in humans by reason. Happens all the time.
use the word how you like I guess it is the common usage. I was hoping for more precision so as to be able to separate an animal's amoral survival instinct from our survival instincts which you call moral.
So when people are motivated by their herd instinct, to do good for the community, or by their empathic instinct, to help someone in need, it isn't really moral behavior?
if humans have an instinct to help each other, and the world becomes overpopulated and there are 200 billion people here or whatever, would having a war to end the overpopulation be morally "good", or would helping each other be good, although it means the end of humanity?
That's quite a reversal of your thesis. Weren't you saying earlier that we derive our morality from philosophers and thinkers?
Not a reversal at all. I never said that is the sole way to become more moral. A lot of times people become moral just by learning what it feels like to be hurt by someone else. They grow in understanding beyond a limited primate survival instinct, and use this understanding to BECOME moral.
That we learn it from higher men like Jesus and Socrates who can reason it out for us and show it to be necessary? And if morality isn't rational, what is the point in heeding it?
My point was simply that both the immoral and moral can be rationalized, so reason is not in itself moral, but is rather a tool of cognition - of course humans use reason to reason, there isn't another way to put ideas into words, but since reasonable people can be immoral, I feel there must be more to it. Since animals can help each other amorally, I think there must be more to it.
Because morality can be reasoned out. Even a sociopath recognizes the benefits of cooperating with a group and seeking the group's advantage over his own.
they see their own collectivism as unreasonable.
We all want to live in an orderly society afterall. Moral behavior enables this to happen. We aren't thrown into a herd of bickering and fighting malcontents all trying to do whatever they want all the time. Nobody wants that, not even a sociopath.
actually the sociopath would see everyone else helping each other as desirable, and their taking advantage of that as desirable. I feel you are not helping with this incorrect projection of sociopath behavior.
You're going back to democratic theory again. Why shouldn't the will of the majority hold precedence in a society? That's just the nature of democracy. Can you justify the alternative--of the will of a few becoming the law of the land? I can't.
My point about democracy was that it makes sense, even as pure democracy (which is not my favorite version, along with the founding fathers), because it is a way to get things DONE, whereas moral relativism is a way to judge truth. Two different things. Relativistic behavior may just be a way for large societies to exist, that doesn't make the large society more moral than the hermit out in the desert who is still just as human. This relates to my point about talking about morality, versus my morality, or our morality. Is there a morality that applies to that guy and me as well? Maybe not. He doesn't have anyone to kill steal hurt. Is his lack of cooperation with society at large immoral? I don't think it is. Why is mine immoral, if I help nobody the way he helps nobody?
We do the same thing with reason and truth. We don't say there are a set of objective absolute reasons or truths.
Many of us do. Everyone who isn't a relativist has to in some way say that. If you just say the group decides, it is just a collective relativism.
Yet we DO say there is the human capacity to arrive at the reasonable and the truthful.
Same with morality. No absolute truths in this area either. Yet a common sense of what is truly moral given the situation and the person making the decision.
I just want to know in what way you disagree with the idea that people agree on what is moral and after some percentage of people agree that thing IS moral?
How do you decide what is ok then? There must be SOME rationale for why you choose one behavior or another. What else could it be but your own reasoning?
my point is that I can decide what is right, without imagining that it becomes right by me saying so.
