The Relevance of the Concept of God

[cole grey]

You've drifted from morality to law all the way to politics now. Nice of you to change the goal posts like that.

well it is quite difficult to talk about masses of people without talking about politics. And of course, without political examples, there don't seem to be many examples of mass movements. I mean we could talk about post-modernist art or commercialism, but i thought political examples would stick closest to my point about "top-down" morality. If you have an apolitical model to work with, I would be happy to switch to that. If we stick with personal models of morality, we don't have to even talk about relativism, or dependence on another human for interpretations. I am just trying to have a conversation.

We WERE discussing where a society gets its moral values from and then you decide to start talking about how the democratic process doesn't exactly work in all cases necessitating a top down decision by "higher authorities." We all know that. But that has nothing to do with where a society derives its sense of right and wrong.

A society or a person? Discussing societies without talking about politics is hard.

Perhaps you agree with Nietszche that democracy is a morality of weak slaves?

no and I also eat shellfish. I guess I just can't get that purist thing going. I am pretty sure there is some point in what Nietzsche said that could be pulled out of the chaff though. He was very anti-political in general, I mean denigrating mass movements of all types. Perhaps he just hated,"getting along," so much because he thought it wasn't as valid as having personal value systems. Perhaps it relates to what he might have seen as people ignoring humanity's real violent struggle to survive by pretending we could get by with getting along and no personal responsibility. I don't know.

Who exactly then is going to step up to the role of playing superman to decide for us what is right and wrong in the end? I still want you to define who these "higher authorities" in morality are that we are supposed to just listen to and obey. The philosophers? Which one? Marx? Nietszche? Bakunin? Rousseau? Confuscius? Jesus?

i personally am going for a synthesis starting from first principles, some of which I attribute to the people you mention, or my understanding of their positions on being human. I would suggest that we do depend on these types of "advanced" thinkers not only to build but to fortify our own moralities all the time.
1- human rights - which I claim from philosophical and not scientific principles, and I have yet to hear an argument against human rights that appears logical.
2- human responsibility - this is a hard one for materialists and fundamentalists
3- epistemological sophistication - dependence on non-empirical data for philosophy, empirical for science of course
I don't always experience them in that hierarchical order I guess they kind of all relate and entangle each other.

Are you saying I have to pick one book to find valid points in? I never said that.

 

[Magical Realist]

I would suggest that we do depend on these types of "advanced" thinkers not only to build but to fortify our own moralities all the time.

So there was no morality in societies prior to the birth of these thinkers? It was just a sort of anarchic chaos of everyone doin their own thing? Not buying that.

 

[cole grey]

Do you agree with him that democracy is mere mob rule--a slave morality of the weak and the jealous?

I would say he and I are judging things from a different starting point, and i have the benefit of many years of historical and international examples he didn't have. I agree with the founding fathers that a pure ochlocracy, i.e. pure democracy, is not what I want. I would guess Nietzsche didn't have a great understanding of our type of government which was a representative democracy governed by rule of law, since a lot of Americans don't even understand it, and if he saw how we treated slaves and American Indians, before we got the system on a better trajectory, he shouldn't be impressed anyway. I don't know about that weak and jealous bit, I would say he was being vitriolic. But then again, I guess I would actually say that Americans in their dealings with the Indians were exhibiting exactly what Nietzsche would call weak morals, i.e. not standing up for higher principles, and just "getting by", somehow not taking responsibility for white America's territorial demands, even though they were part of the social group making those demands.

 

[cole grey]

So there was no morality in societies prior to the birth of these thinkers? It was just a sort of anarchic chaos of everyone doin their own thing? Not buying that.

Those guys have been around a long time. Hammurabi, the Vedas, the Hebrews, etc. Of course I am not an anthropologist, but I would suggest that there were tribal moralities which did have top-down rules long before that. And shamans and chieftains definitely interpreted the "will of the gods", although very many probably just had pure feudalism instead, simply waving a big club or sword. And if we are going to go back to the Neanderthals or something, I just don't know how to navigate that area. This is why I have such a hard time with people who say,"secular morality". It is a little bit like saying "anaerobic morality", at this stage of our history.
Speaking of anarchism may be useful, but I am not an expert on that, although I have doubts in their basic postulations based on my so-called cynicism that I just call awareness.

 

[Syne]

Is it not true that a large majority of atheists, who claim morals to be valid at all, assume that the basis for those morals are largely dependent upon circumstances and/or culture? Is this not how they view most moralities?

I don't see any dramatic differences between atheists' and non-atheists' views of these matters.

Atheists admit that their own morality is only relative, while the religious generally make no such admission. Which do you think is a more confident assertion of their morality?

Again, I have specifically assume that a god does not exist, so there would be nothing to believe in. I will repeat for your benefit. Moral relativism is how a person views all morals, not just those they espouse. While you may very well view a variety of moralities as relative, I assure you those who espouse any give religious morality do not. "Religious relativism" is thus a nonsense phrase.

The Oxford Guide to Philosophy' begins its discussion of ethical relativism this way:

"Relativism, ethical. The view that moral appraisals are essentially dependent upon the standards that define a particular moral code, the practices and norms accepted by a social group at a specific place and time. Given that there is in fact a plurality of social groups, with differing mores, the relativist argues that there exists no point of view from which these codes can themselves be appraised, no 'absolute' criteria by which they can be criticised." [p.800]​

Yes, that is correct, but only from the specific viewpoint of someone who espouses moral relativism (hence the entry title). But notice that it points out "moral appraisals". That is what you seem to be missing. Moral relativism is all about appraising all moral systems to be relative. Since the religious do not, the term in inapplicable.

My point was that religious groups are social groups. It's probably true that most members of religious groups do share ethical norms native to their particular group in common with other members of the same group. The problem is that members of different religious groups probably embrace a number of different norms, native to their own groups. In the absence of clear and objective revelations from an actually existing supernatural moral authority, 'absolute' and non-culturally-specific means of appraisal don't seem to be any more available in religion than they are in the rest of human culture. Whatever problems of relativism afflict the relationship between ethics and culture generally, remain present if we turn our attention specifically to religious ethics and to religious culture.

You seem to be saying nothing more than that you think everyone should espouse your moral relativism. How is that any different from the religious thinking you should espouse their morality?

It is not, no matter how justified you believe your view to be. The religious believe they do have clear revelations, just as much as you believe they do not.

Cognitive bias keeps you from understanding.

"A pattern that is not liable to human limitations"? Where can such a thing be found? How can human beings like ourselves recognize it if we do encounter it?

It is not my goal here to tell you how to "find god", and whether you realize it or not, that is what you are asking. I assume you have already dismissed any answer anyone is likely to give you on the matter.

Obviously members of a particular culture, whether secular or religious, often do believe for no particular reason beyond their own membership in their culture, that the norms they are familiar with are both natural and right, and that everyone else's are both bizarre and wrong. The issue of relativism might not arise very often in these people's thinking.

Relativism is no different in this respect. You find absolute moralities to be bizarre or irrational, and as such universal ethical principles are not likely to make much sense to you.

Problems only arise when these individuals encounter other people whose cultural norms are significantly different than their own. That's when the shortage of culture independent assessment criteria makes itself felt. In these problem cases, people have the choice of either launching themselves into conflict, or else centering themselves at a more fundamental level of shared humanity where they might be able to agree on actions that they all perceive as fair, compassionate and humane.

The only problem is one of not applying in-group moral values as equally applicable to out-groups. Not even moral relativism offers any reliable "assessment criteria".

That's a situation where Syne's problem of moral relativism moves front and center. While it's true that devotees of individual traditions might believe that their own tradition possesses unique divine revelations and occupies a unique position from which to judge everyone and everything else, not everyone else agrees. And there isn't any tradition-independent criterion that we can use to adjudicate rival religious claims.

There is not even any reliable secular criteria for adjudicating rival laws, mores, or customs. It helps to have the confidence in your own morality to apply it equally, even when adjudicating your actions toward a rival. Moral relativism basically assumes any given morality (your own included) is just the luck of the draw.

 

[Syne]

If 85% of the people want buffalo hides for rugs, and 15% of the people need the buffalo to be maintained as a viable food source, should we go with the higher principle, or the democracy? If everyone can answer this question fully before arguing with me about things I haven't said, that would be great.

That is exactly the reason why the US has the Senate, where each state has an equal number of representatives regardless of state population. This helps ensure that the minority opinion/need is not completely trampled, especially where that opinion/need is concentrated geographically.

 

[cole grey]

That is exactly the reason why the US has the Senate, where each state has an equal number of representatives regardless of state population. This helps ensure that the minority opinion/need is not completely trampled, especially where that opinion/need is concentrated geographically.

Unfortunately, in the south, the minority was not being represented by their senators, who were generally acting as instruments of oppression, if not authors of it, from what i understand. We have an interesting balance of fair and unfair, top-down and bottom up government in the usa. Clearly, even a good system can be abused. Especially when "good" people stand by and do nothing as people are harmed.

P.S. I would like to add this thought regarding the basic goodness of people - i am suggesting that we don't say "not harmful" is "good", so we are at least looking at things clearly. People are basically ok, not good or evil, as a species, looking at it all, i think that makes more sense.

 

[wynn]

The phrase "mob rule" seems to be cole grey's personal perjorative that he uses to refer to what both you and I would rather term 'democracy' or 'individual liberty'. He appears to me to be arguing against these ideals in favor of some sort of Iran-style religious totalitarianism.

You, of all people, see his posts that way??

Stranger than fiction ...

 

[wynn]

Moral relativism basically assumes any given morality (your own included) is just the luck of the draw.

There was a fabulous topic posted a while back, but it hardly received any attention:

Can a moral relativist be trusted?:

Trust is a pretty important factor that plays a positive role in a functioning society. To trust someone basically entails that you can rely on the actions of another person to conform to certain virtues or expectations while basically abandoning your own control over the situation.
/.../
Now the kind of moral relativism I wish to focus on in this entry is the one that denies both kinds of moral absolutism discussed and I want to know how any person can trust a meta-ethical moral relativist in a manner that is based on reason and logic?

Let’s get back to the two examples. Is there any way a person can logically leave their child with another person and logically trust that person if he states that there are no objectively and intrinsically good or evil actions? Is there any way a voter can logically trust the promises of a person that states that there are no objectively and intrinsically good or evil actions?

In both of the above cases I would argue no and in general I don’t think there is a logical and rational way to trust a meta-ethical moral relativist. The moral beliefs of a meta-ethical moral relativist might be just what the voters are looking for or what the mom of the child is looking for. He or she might believe individual rights are good, but he can’t believe they are objectively good, and does think it is only relatively bad and good. He might later on change his mind on any issue he supported, or lie about anything and still think his choices are relatively good and relatively bad. A meta-ethical moral relativist can basically lie, be corrupt and fake a very good personality and policies and still feel morally superior to those who disapprove of his choices, even if he contradicts himself.

Of course, I don't think many people (if any) are moral relativists. If there are, how do you think people can trust you based on reason and logic? And to everyone else, how can you trust a meta-ethical moral relativist in such manner that does not collapse into blind faith? The kind of faith that some people view as irrational.

 

[wynn]

People are basically ok, not good or evil, as a species, looking at it all, i think that makes more sense.

Arguments about the true nature of phenomena are tricky. Because whatever we declare to be the true nature of a phenomenon, we end up in some kind of trouble or other.

If we say that people are by their nature good, we have trouble explaining why they do bad things.
If we say that people are by their nature bad, we have trouble explaining why strive for justice and goodness.
If we say that people are by their nature neutral, we have trouble explaining why we bother with anything at all.

Saying that people are "basically ok" doesn't solve anything either, has similar problems as the above examples. But perhaps it is actually meant as a general expression of good faith, of a faith or conviction that eventually, things will work out fine for humans and the whole universe.

 

[wynn]

The only problem is one of not applying in-group moral values as equally applicable to out-groups.

Not sure why you think this is a problem.

Applying in-group moral values as equally applicable to out-groups actually does away with groups altogether, there is no "us vs. them" nor "us and them" anymore.
Absolutism is the great equalizer, not relativism.
(It's funny how people when they want equality resort to relativism, when in fact it's absolutism that makes it possible.)

 

[cole grey]

A
If we say that people are by their nature neutral, we have trouble explaining why we bother with anything at all.

a neutral view doesn't insist that people can't improve.

Saying that people are "basically ok" doesn't solve anything either, has similar problems as the above examples. But perhaps it is actually meant as a general expression of good faith, of a faith or conviction that eventually, things will work out fine for humans and the whole universe.

it solves a problem of language being misused and people not calling something good that is merely functional. I don't know about that next part.

 

[wynn]

a neutral view doesn't insist that people can't improve.

It doesn't explain why they would or should bother.

it solves a problem of language being misused and people not calling something good that is merely functional.

If you're making claims about the functionality of something, how can those be separate from the claims about its nature?
If it's functional, it's good.

I don't know about that next part.

It's the better part ...

 

[cole grey]

It doesn't explain why they would or should bother.

perhaps they are pulled, or even forced, forward by the "good" group". Of course it is quite difficult to speculate as to whether humans improved willingly or unwillingly, or even if they've improved on a personal level or rather that our systems have improved. Alsooooooo, someone who is merely "ok" isn't going to have the same objection to being good that they would to being evil, so they might in this way be predisposed to becoming good over time, rising with the tide so to speak. Never thought about that in that way before, but it would make an argument for a god creating a neutral species being able to logically say they created a good species. Just very slowly. haha.

If you're making claims about the functionality of something, how can those be separate from the claims about its nature?
If it's functional, it's good.

sharks are highly functional. There is obviously a difference between "good" and "good at". Let's you and i not waste time pretending either of us are materialists.

 

[wynn]

perhaps they are pulled, or even forced, forward by the "good" group". Of course it is quite difficult to speculate as to whether humans improved willingly or unwillingly, or even if they've improved on a personal level or rather that our systems have improved. Alsooooooo, someone who is merely "ok" isn't going to have the same objection to being good that they would to being evil, so they might in this way be predisposed to becoming good over time, rising with the tide so to speak. Never thought about that in that way before, but it would make an argument for a god creating a neutral species being able to logically say they created a good species. Just very slowly. haha.

We were talking about whether humans are good or bad by nature - or what's with the whole thing about human nature.

sharks are highly functional. There is obviously a difference between "good" and "good at". Let's you and i not waste time pretending either of us are materialists.

The shark whisperers.

 

[Capracus]

Gautama Buddha rejected the existence of a creator deity,refused to endorse many views on creation and stated that questions on the origin of the world are not ultimately useful for ending suffering.

Rather, Buddhism emphasizes the system of causal relationships underlying the universe which constitute the natural order and source of enlightenment. No dependence of phenomena on a supernatural reality is asserted in order to explain the behaviour of matter. According to the doctrine of the Buddha, a human being must study Nature in order to attain personal wisdom regarding the nature of things. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Buddhism

Where exactly do you see anything "mythical" in that synopsis? Not all god concepts include ideas of "redemption or final disposition". Neither does mine rely on either of these as an "operating principle".

You conveniently left out the core concepts.

Samsara in Buddhism
Within Buddhism, samsara is defined as the continual repetitive cycle of birth, death, and bardo that arises from ordinary beings' grasping and fixating on a self and experiences. Samsara arises out of ignorance (avidya) and is characterized by dukkha (suffering, anxiety, dissatisfaction). In the Buddhist view, liberation from samsara is possible by following the Buddhist path.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara#Samsara_in_Buddhism

Karma in Buddhism
Karmaphala (karmic action and result) is identified as part of the broader Buddhist doctrine of interdependent origination (pratityasamutpada), which states that all phenomena arise as the result of multiple causes and conditions. Karmaphala is a specific instance of this doctrine that applies specifically to sentient beings–when there is a conscious intention (cetanā) behind an action, then the action is karma and the corresponding results are karmic results. According to Buddhist scripture, the Buddha said: ‘It is “intention” that I call karma; having formed the intention, one performs acts (karma) by body, speech and mind.’[1] As implied by this statement, every action of body, speech, or mind is karma, and the determining factor in the quality of our actions is our intention or motivation.
Karma is said to be the engine which drives the cycle of uncontrolled rebirth (saṃsāra) for sentient beings. It is believed that a genuine, experiential understanding of karmic action and result enables one to free oneself from samsara and attain liberation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism

Nirvana
In the Sutta Pitaka the Buddha describes nirvāṇa as the perfect peace of mind possessed by one who is liberated (Pali: arahant). It is to be distinguished from peaceful moods arising from a temporary absence of anger, sensual desire, anxiety and other afflicting states (kleshas). Nirvāṇa is an 'ultimate' peace that is achieved after a lengthy process of mind-body transformation during which the uprooting and final dissolution of the volitional formations (Pali: samskaras or sankharas) (structures within the unconscious mind that form the underlying basis for psychological dispositions[citation needed]) takes place. According to the Buddha, during the course of many repeated incarnations these deeply buried structures (also referred to as karmic 'seeds'; Sanskrit: bija) are either strengthened by indulgence in worldly activities (a person doing so is described as a Puthujjana) or weakened by following the path of the Enlightened Ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana#Buddhism

The above aren’t mystical concepts? Is your concept of god equally as unmystical?

Who said anything about "governing"? I specifically assumed a god does not exist, so there would be no entity to "govern" anything.

I don’t assume the existence of gods either, but I do realize that the perceived notion of their existence governs the behavior of their adherents. To clear your confusion look up the word govern.

You need to learn something about moral relativism. It is not about the variety of morals, but only how those who espouse it approach questions of morality. Since you seem to be saying that you view these various moralities as equal, you do espouse moral relativism, but each of these moralities do not share your sense of equality. Moral relativism is how a person views all morals, not just those they espouse.

Moral relativism is the acknowledgement that there are no moral absolutes. Moral concepts and behavior are as much products of evolution as our biology and culture. Why would you expect unlike human experience to produce like behaviors? My morals reflect the conditioning of my life experience, not that of a Neanderthal of the Pleistocene. I don’t expect the morals of my distant descendants to resemble my own.

You only associate "depravity" with a concept of god because you conflate it with religion.

Many concepts of god, many unsavory by our cultural standards. If you’re going to argue the benefits of a particular belief system, then you also have to acknowledge its associated damages.

 

[(Q)]

Arguments about the true nature of phenomena are tricky. Because whatever we declare to be the true nature of a phenomenon, we end up in some kind of trouble or other.

If we say that people are by their nature good, we have trouble explaining why they do bad things.

Not at all, it is bad ideologies, like religions, that teach and cause good people to do bad things. There are also mental disorders that can cause people to do bad things. Often, many extreme religious people have mental disorders.

If we say that people are by their nature bad, we have trouble explaining why strive for justice and goodness.

People by nature are not bad, those who strive for 'justice and goodness' use reason and rationale to do so, based on their own evolved compassion and altruism.

 

[Magical Realist]

This is why I have such a hard time with people who say,"secular morality". It is a little bit like saying "anaerobic morality", at this stage of our history.

You seem to be asserting again the thing you were so insistent you weren't--that belief in a God or gods is necessary for morality. Do you really think a person who does good out of empathy and compassion cares one iota whether it is the will of God or not? I don't. When I help someone it has nothing to do with a God or higher authority telling me that is what I should do. I think this is the primary source of morality for our species thruout time--the sense of empathy and loyalty and community one feels for one's fellowman. This instinct for altruism and reciprocity of actions is not something we derived from philosophers, lawgivers, or a God. It is a result of millions of years of evolution and of living in tribes where this instinct for empathy was selected for and refined over time. We are moral creatures because we are hardwired to be this way. It's just part of being human. Or maybe of just being a primate!

"Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: March 20, 2007


Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.

The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress.

Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, “Primates and Philosophers,” the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.

Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped.

Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.

Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.

He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality.

Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.

Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.

Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies.

Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape.

These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.

Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.

Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.”

As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders. “The profound irony is that our noblest achievement — morality — has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior — warfare,” he writes. “The sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter.”

Dr. de Waal has faced down many critics in evolutionary biology and psychology in developing his views. The evolutionary biologist George Williams dismissed morality as merely an accidental byproduct of evolution, and psychologists objected to attributing any emotional state to animals. Dr. de Waal convinced his colleagues over many years that the ban on inferring emotional states was an unreasonable restriction, given the expected evolutionary continuity between humans and other primates.

His latest audience is moral philosophers, many of whom are interested in his work and that of other biologists. “In departments of philosophy, an increasing number of people are influenced by what they have to say,” said Gilbert Harman, a Princeton University philosopher.

Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher at Columbia University, likes Dr. de Waal’s empirical approach. “I have no doubt there are patterns of behavior we share with our primate relatives that are relevant to our ethical decisions,” he said. “Philosophers have always been beguiled by the dream of a system of ethics which is complete and finished, like mathematics. I don’t think it’s like that at all.”

But human ethics are considerably more complicated than the sympathy Dr. de Waal has described in chimps. “Sympathy is the raw material out of which a more complicated set of ethics may get fashioned,” he said. “In the actual world, we are confronted with different people who might be targets of our sympathy. And the business of ethics is deciding who to help and why and when.”

Many philosophers believe that conscious reasoning plays a large part in governing human ethical behavior and are therefore unwilling to let everything proceed from emotions, like sympathy, which may be evident in chimpanzees. The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator — once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”

That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from the emotions.

But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass, probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal’s view. For example, he says: “People object to moral solutions that involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian deliberations have not.”

Philosophers have another reason biologists cannot, in their view, reach to the heart of morality, and that is that biological analyses cannot cross the gap between “is” and “ought,” between the description of some behavior and the issue of why it is right or wrong. “You can identify some value we hold, and tell an evolutionary story about why we hold it, but there is always that radically different question of whether we ought to hold it,” said Sharon Street, a moral philosopher at New York University. “That’s not to discount the importance of what biologists are doing, but it does show why centuries of moral philosophy are incredibly relevant, too.”

Biologists are allowed an even smaller piece of the action by Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina. He believes morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics. “It would be a fallacy to assume a single true morality could be identified by what we do instinctively, rather than by what we ought to do,” he said. “One of the principles that might guide a single true morality might be recognition of equal dignity for all human beings, and that seems to be unprecedented in the animal world.”

Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers’ view that biologists cannot step from “is” to “ought.” “I’m not sure how realistic the distinction is,” he said. “Animals do have ‘oughts.’ If a juvenile is in a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing, animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of ‘ought’ situation.”

Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.” By this definition chimpanzees in his view do possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.

“Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are,” Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book “Good Natured.” Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in Dr. de Waal’s view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in “Primates and Philosophers,” with “a compass for life’s choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality.”---http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[wynn]

The above aren’t mystical concepts? Is your concept of god equally as unmystical?

Can you say more about why you think samsara, karma and nirvana are "mystical"?

 

[wynn]

Not at all, it is bad ideologies, like religions, that teach and cause good people to do bad things.

Then the "goodness" of those supposedly good people is weak, and not worthy of being called "good" at all.

People by nature are not bad, those who strive for 'justice and goodness' use reason and rationale to do so, based on their own evolved compassion and altruism.

And some people are more "not bad" than others?