For those who hold a belief in naturalism--the theory that all phenomena can be explained mechanistically in terms of material causes--issues of philosophy are always problematic. When it comes to issues of metaphysics or epistemology, the naturalist can often simply ignore the fact that their beliefs can't be explained using their starting premise. On ethical matters, however, they have a more difficult time being so intellectually passive.
Many naturalists (and I include most atheists in this category) who have give sufficient thought to the issue invariably concede that morality is purely relative. Others, however, have a difficult time conceding that morality is rooted in nothing deeper than personal preference. As a commenter on one of my previous posts noted:
Universal morals can start with the golden rule. That exists pretty much throughout all cultures and even into higher order primates. It doesn't take a rocket science, or an omniscient being, to figure out that you shouldn't do to people what you wouldn't want to have done to yourself.
The implication of this claim is that since the "golden rule" is a universally held belief, it must be explainable by purely naturalistic processes. My contention is that belief is false and that this moral principle could not have been developed by natural selection.
But before I can prove my point, we must first define what we mean by the Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule Theorem
Harry Gensler's provides what is probably the most simple and concise summary of the Golden Rule that we could find:
Our golden rule theorem says: "Treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation." To apply GR, I'd imagine myself in the other person's place on the receiving end of the action. GR forbids this combination:
* I do something to another.
* I'm unwilling that this be done to me in the same situation.GR doesn't tell us what specific act to do. And it doesn't replace regular moral norms. It only prescribes consistency -- that we not have our actions (toward another) be out of harmony with our desires (about a reversed-situation action). To apply GR adequately, we need knowledge and imagination.
If we're conscientious and impartial, then we'll follow GR -- since then we won't do something to another unless we believe it would be all right -- and thus believe it would be all right to do to us in the same situation -- and thus are willing that it be done to us in the same situation.
In order to understand whether the GR could have developed as a product of evolutionary processes, we must turn for help to evolutionary psychology, the field that examines how behavior evolves. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have produced an excellent primer on the subject so we will use that as a point of reference throughout this post.
If naturalism is true then the brain is nothing more than a physical system whose operation is governed solely by the laws of chemistry and physics. Information is collected by our senses and translated into chemical reactions in our head. These cause the firing of neurons which collect into neural circuits which ultimately generate behavior.
The "Eat Dung and Die" Principle
To say that the brain is functioning "properly" means that it produces behavior that is appropriate to a specific environment. Naturalism, of course, claims that our brains were "designed" by the blind process of natural selection and that there is no ultimate purpose behind the behaviors we develop.
Natural selection does not work "for the good of the species", as many people think. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is a process in which a phenotypic design feature causes its own spread through a population (which can happen even in cases where this leads to the extinction of the species).
In the meantime (to continue our scatological examples) you can think of natural selection as the "eat dung and die" principle. All animals need neural circuits that govern what they eat -- knowing what is safe to eat is a problem that all animals must solve. For humans, feces are not safe to eat -- they are a source of contagious diseases. Now imagine an ancestral human who had neural circuits that made dung smell sweet -- that made him want to dig in whenever he passed a smelly pile of dung. This would increase his probability of contracting a disease. If he got sick as a result, he would be too tired to find much food, too exhausted to go looking for a mate, and he might even die an untimely death.
In contrast, a person with different neural circuits -- ones that made him avoid feces -- would get sick less often. He will therefore have more time to find food and mates and will live a longer life. The first person will eat dung and die; the second will avoid it and live. As a result, the dung-eater will have fewer children than the dung-avoider. Since the neural circuitry of children tends to resemble that of their parents, there will be fewer dung-eaters in the next generation, and more dung-avoiders.
As this process continues, generation after generation, the dung-eaters will eventually disappear from the population. Why? They ate dung and died out. The only kind of people left in the population will be those like you and me -- ones who are descended from the dung-avoiders. No one will be left who has neural circuits that make dung delicious.
In other words, the reason we have one set of circuits rather than another is that the circuits that we have were better at solving problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history than alternative circuits were. The brain is a naturally constructed computational system whose function is to solve adaptive information-processing problems (such as face recognition, threat interpretation, language acquisition, or navigation).
Over evolutionary time, its circuits were cumulatively added because they "reasoned" or "processed information" in a way that enhanced the adaptive regulation of behavior and physiology.
Our neural circuitry, however, is designed only to solve adaptive problems. These are problems that occur repeatedly throughout the developmental history of a species and their affects the reproduction of individual organisms. Differential reproduction--rather than survival--is the true engine that drives natural selection. As Cosmides and Tooby make clear, the only kinds of problems that natural selection can design circuits for solving are adaptive problems.
The GR and Adaptive Problems
Now that we understand what types of problems natural selection can solve it becomes clear that the GR is not an evolved behavior. In order to apply the GR, our ancestral hunter-gather (we'll call him Ugh) needs to possess knowledge of a cause and effect relationship (i.e., if he bashes his neighbor, Zog, over the head with a rock then Zog will die), the ability to imagine himself in the same situation (putting himself in Zog's hidebound shoes), and self-reflection in order to choose one behavior or the other based on his knowledge and imagination. Because the GR requires all of these components to be in place already, the necessary brain circuitry required for this principle could not have developed as a response to a single adaptive problem.
But if we assume that these features are already in place, is it reasonable to believe that the GR could have eventually developed? Before we search for an answer we must first keep in mind that naturalism assumes that the human brain evolved very slowly:
Generation after generation, for 10 million years, natural selection slowly sculpted the human brain, favoring circuitry that was good at solving the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors -- problems like finding mates, hunting animals, gathering plant foods, negotiating with friends, defending ourselves against aggression, raising children, choosing a good habitat, and so on. Those whose circuits were better designed for solving these problems left more children, and we are descended from them.
This is an important fact to keep in mind as we examine the type of problems that Ugh is likely to have faced.
Applying the GR to Adaptive Problems
Let's see how the GR could be applied to an adaptive problem, one that includes the two criteria listed above. One of the most obvious and persistent problems is the need to acquire food. Since the allocation of scarce resources is a problem that modern man has been unable to solve, it would surely have been an issue for Ugh and his kin. This problem is both persistent and affects differential reproduction. But how would the GR affect this particular problem?
The GR would fall into one of the following categories:
1. Applying the GR always leads to an increase in reproductive success.
2. Applying the GR never leads to an increase in reproductive success.
3. Applying the GR sometimes leads to reproductive success and sometimes it does not.
4. Applying the GR has no effect on reproductive success.
If the answer is (2) or (4) then the GR falls into the same category as the male nipple; it becomes a feature that developed but has no importance to survival. It could simply be dismissed as irrelevant.
If the GR always leads to reproductive success then we should not be able to find any counterexamples when it would not be beneficial. In fact, we don't have to look far before we find some rather obvious situations where the GR would lower reproduction.
Imagine that Ugh and Zog, two widowers with two children each, find themselves with only enough food to feed four people. The children are too young to hunt and would quickly starve to death if their fathers were not around to feed and protect them.
Ugh is stronger than Zog and could easily kill him and cause his family to starve to death. But his neural circuitry is programmed to behave in a manner consistent with the GR and so chooses not to kill Zog. Because he refuses to save his own family at the expense of Zog's, all but one of the children will starve to death. Since there are not enough males and females to propagate the race, both families eventually die off.
Admittedly, this is belaboring a rather obvious point: that following the GR could sometimes lower the changes of differential reproduction.
That leaves us not only with the only remaining category but also with a necessary condition for the development of the GR. The GR could have developed only as a response to adaptive problems where following the rule increased or had no effect on survival. When it hindered survival it was ignored (otherwise it would have caused the downfall of the species).
A Non-Teleological Ethics?
Obviously, though, this isn't what people mean when they talk about the GR. If it is abandoned whenever it is believed to hinder an individual's chances of successful reproduction, then the rule will be of limited value. While it would exclude killing another person for no reason, it could not be used to bar such actions as rape and theft of food.
As the American jurist Richard Posner rightly notes,
The majority of educated Americans believe that nature is the amoral scene of Darwinian struggle. Occasional attempts are made to derive social norms from nature so conceived, but they are not likely to succeed. It is true that a variety of widely accepted norms, including the keeping of certain promises, the abhorrence of unjustified killing of human beings, and perhaps even the sanctity of property rights, promote the adaptation of human species to its environment. But so does genocide. (1)
This is, in fact, what we should expect to find. Evolution is a blind process that has no teleology. Whatever behavior works is the behavior that survives. The main problem for naturalistic ethics is trying to establish moral norms without smuggling in a guiding purpose.
For example, we can't say that since cooperation helps us survive that it is a "good" behavior. Nature doesn't really care if we survive or not. Even our own genes don't really care if we pass them on to further generations. We either do or we don't. When we do we call it survival. When we don't we call it extinction. Nature doesn't care which event actualizes.
But, the naturalist will protest and argue that we do care if we survive? True. But so what? If nature doesn't care then why should we? But, they will stammer, we can't help but care about our survival. If that is true, then the will to survive is our main preference. Our morality should therefore be structured in order that this instinct is preserved. We should adopt whichever set of behaviors increases our individual chances of survival.
If cooperating with my neighbor in a particular situation helps me to survive then I should do that. If killing my neighbor is more beneficial to my survival then I should do that instead. Since nature does not provide an objective moral standard I must make an existential choice about what is right and wrong.
Few naturalists, though, have the courage of Nietzsche and will undoubtedly choose to retain a "slave morality" regardless of whether they have sufficient and necessary epistemic reasons for doing so.
What they fail to realize, though, is that there preference isn't any more moral than the actions of a psychopath. When they say this is right they are merely saying this is my preference. Perhaps they don't think it is right to herd Jews in concentration camps and kill them. That is their preference. If Nazis, on the other hand, have a different preference then that is also a valid existential choice.
Since there is no being that has an ontological existence higher than the individual human, there is no objective standard by which we can discern which preference is right and which is wrong. Both are equally valid. In fact, the Nazi's preference to kill the Jew and the Jewish person's desire not to be killed are equal. Neither can be considered more right than the other.
In an ethics rooted in naturalism, morality is simply the name given to the set of preferences of the person or group with the most power. Nature respects power but has no place for morality. Most followers of religion subscribe to the Golden Rule because it is a refection of their Creator. If believers in naturalism were consistent they would do the same and adopt the Red Rule. After all, their Creator is none other than Nature, red in tooth and claw.
(1) Qtd. by Philip Johnson, "Nihilism and the End of Law"
Hi Joe,
While you bring up a lot of good things in this post, and I appreciate that you seem to understand some of the issues better than most (e.g. that nature doesn't *care* about us surviving). However, I have my doubts about attempts to undermine naturalistic ethics in the way you go about it here.
The problem is that trying to show that something like the GR couldn't have evolved is essentially claiming to falsify adaptationism. But the reason adaptationism is such bad science is that it's not falsifiable.
In order to defeat adaptationism, one essentially has to make some bad assumptions. Unfortunately you do that here when you say that for the GR to have arisen naturally it would have had to have been adaptive (okay, since this is a bad assumption, I guess that means you're up against "adaptationism-plus"), and again when you say that unless the GR leads to behaviors that are always adaptive it will not be selected for.
First, the GR could have been fixed in a population by some evolutionary force other than selection. Obviously random mutation would have had to gotten things started, but then either drift or gene flow could have done the dirty work.
Second, it's just plain wrong that the only genes selected for are those that yield phenotypes that increase reproductive success one hundred percent of the time. As long as a behavior increases reproductive success somewhat, there is a chance that the underlying genes will be fixed by selection.
The final problematic assumption I see here is that selection always occurs at the level of the individual. Group selection would be particularly tempting for developing an adaptationist tale about GR. It's not hard to see how the fostering of community that GR is bound to do could be advantageous.
As long as the psychology of ethics is a black box, I think it unlikely that there will be a knockdown argument against naturalistic ethics, as its defenders are unconstrained by facts in the spinning of their tales. The best we can hope for is ampliative arguments that cripple naturalism and support theism.
You said:
I only got down to this point before I lost focus. Where does the "information" come from that is collected by our senses? If it is just random sensations, how could it be "in form"? If it truly information that was encoded somewhere, then decoded by our senses, resulting in meaning, how did it get encoded? Doesn't the fact it occurs in a pattern that is useful and can be understood and counted on infer that it could not have been caused by natural processes alone? And who authored the "laws" of physics and chemistry? Isn't that also a foundational assumption that already demands a process other than naturalism to exist? Shouldn't we insist that those who believe in naturalism use terms that don't have connotations that imply supernatural intelligence?
Any ethical system that supposes that all persons are equal under moral law could do quite well with the golden rule as a basis. And many have such systems have done so. See also Kant's categorical imperative.
The question then arises, would a philosophy built on naturalistic assumptions also be one in which all persons would be viewed equally? Quite simply, I have to say, there is no reason to suppose that one could not. Nietzche provided one answer to the question (a negative one), but he doesn't seem to have provided the most popular answer, and you'd have to argue he provided the best (best from the perspective of a naturalist) answer. I've never met an atheist who did not at least appear hold this egalitarian assumption. Furthermore, I think there are sound reasons for an impartial observer to begin a moral philosophy with such an assumption. But even if MOST naturalists were not to develop their ethics on such a helpful egalitarian assumption, if any were able to do so it would invalidate your argument. Unless there is a sound reason to suppose that naturalism precludes the assumption of egalitarianism, your argument doesn't get off the ground.
There are plenty of good reasons to be a theist, but telling people that without a deity there's no reason to suppose they won't end up as Nazis is not one of them.
(Incidentally, I don't see that evolution and ethics have much to do with each other. I don't think too many people would be inclined to argue that evolution could give rise to ethics. It's orthogonal to ethics.)
I see we are yet again treated with another long,boring expose on why any moral system require the Male-God of the kings james version of the bable in order to exist...must be tuesday...
That leaves us not only with the only remaining category but also with a necessary condition for the development of the GR. The GR could have developed only as a response to adaptive problems where following the rule increased or had no effect on survival. When it hindered survival it was ignored (otherwise it would have caused the downfall of the species).
This is where you run off the rails. Assume that in a social species, following the GR more often leads to survival than to death. Individuals in a population that always follows the GR would be better off than those in a population that never follows the GR. There's no requirement that the GR be ignored in those cases where it is detrimental, if those situations are less frequent than the ones where GR is beneficial.
Now, consider a situation in which some, but not all, individuals ignore the GR when it hinders survival (call them defectors). Those defectors would have an advantage over those who always follow the GR, but only in the context of a population in which most individuals do follow the GR, but they are in effect parasites on the individuals who always follow the GR. One would predict that natural selection would result in a stable low frequency of the defectors. If they become too common, they lose their relative advantage.
(It's also not obvious that following the GR requires conscious understanding of the rule, so your initial setup of the situation is shaky, too. Might the Golden Rule evolve as a modification of altruistic behavior that is observed in social species that aren't self aware?)
If believers in naturalism were consistent they would do the same and adopt the Red Rule. After all, their Creator is none other than Nature, red in tooth and claw.
I don't get this. You just got through arguing that for followers of naturalism, morality is whatever they define it be. If philosophical naturalists want to follow the GR all the time, isn't that just as consistent as any other approach to naturalistic morality and better for us too? Why do you want to convince them to be brutal nihilists instead? Is the idea to make them as nasty as possible to make us theists look better in comparison, or is it just unbearable that a different moral system might result in behavior indistinguishable from that of theism?
Incidentally, is there another word we could use for the eeevil followers of philosophical naturalism? I'm rather attached to the word "naturalist" in the sense of " Someone who studies animals or plants, usually in their natural surroundings."
You just don't get it, do you Joe? Here's a little help from our friends at Encarta ("Ethics"):
"Depending on the social setting, the authority invoked for good conduct is the will of a deity, the pattern of nature, or the rule of reason. When the will of a deity is the authority, obedience to the divine commandments in scriptural texts is the accepted standard of conduct. If the pattern of nature is the authority, conformity to the qualities attributed to human nature is the standard. When reason rules, behavior is expected to result from rational thought."
I can't speak for others, but I believe ethics come from reason, not nature. I don't agree with everything he stands for, but I know this is the position of Peter Singer as well. He is not a moral relativist. The is-ness of evolution does not affect the ought-ness of ethics.
Good stuff!
Admittedly, this is belaboring a rather obvious point: that following the GR could sometimes lower the changes of differential reproduction.
Indeed but we don't always follow the GR do we? Sometimes we declare "every man for himself" or sometimes we decide that "our own" must come first don't we?
Obviously, though, this isn't what people mean when they talk about the GR. If it is abandoned whenever it is believed to hinder an individual's chances of successful reproduction, then the rule will be of limited value. While it would exclude killing another person for no reason, it could not be used to bar such actions as rape and theft of food.
Ahhh but it isn't abandoned whenever. It is only abandoned in the most extreme situations. It is usually followed (or we feel it should be followed) in less extreme situations.
Here is where your 'just so' stories run into trouble. Instead of individuals look at larger groups. Imagine a tribe of 100 people that share a "GR Trait". This trait causes them to act in accord with the GR. It's dynamic, though, so it can be reinforced through repeated use and seeing others use it or it can be decreased and nearly eliminated through the opposite. Let's also imagine a very simple but somewhat plausible 'game'.
Let's say the members of this tribe go out hunting and gathering each day and bring the food back to the tribes home where it is consumed in one big communal meal. Now GR would say that the members should bring back all their food because that is what you would want others to do. That way if your hunt was a failure you would still be able to eat. The anti-GR would say you should eat all the good food you catch out in the field and come back with little or nothing for the group meal and eat the food the suckers contribute to the group meal.
Does this behavior increase or decrease the groups chances of survival? Hard to say, we have plenty of examples of communal animals in nature that function sort of like this but we also have plenty of examples of 'loner animals' who are on the opposite end. Since we see it works for at least some animals we can conclude that this strategy must work at least in some situations.
This creates an instability, though. Suppose you're a great hunter and you eat a little bit of your catch. Well you're still providing the group with more than your 'fair share' of food but you're also giving yourself a bit more food than if you purely followed the GR. This is all well and good, suppose you start pushing it more and more and eat more and more of your catch. Well two things could happen:
1. The group notices you bring home no food and has less incentive to put up with your eating. You will have to start providing for yourself some of the 'services' the group provides such as keeping a watch as you sleep at night or providing food when you have some bad luck. If you cannot do this you're going to have to start going in the opposite direction and make a show of bringing home all your food for a while to get back in the groups 'good graces'.
2. You're skill as a hunter is so good you can survive even being shunned by the group. You go off on your own and 100,000 years later your descendants are still picking nuts out of the woods while the group's descendants are making TV shows about 'Big Foot' sightings.
To me this 'story' seems quite plausible and would result in the ethics we see 'hardwired' into us today. A general feeling that we should obey the GR but also cheat on it just a bit here and there when we can get away with it as well as ditching it in the most extreme situations. It even explains 'society ethics', advocating the GR in all situations and inventing incentives to bring that about.
Does that confer a survival advantage? Almost certainly. As Hobbes noted, humans are more or less alike in the big scheme of things. The strongest man is not so strong that he can't be equalled by two or three other men. Humans work great as social animals and the evidence for that is as clear as looking at the night side of earth filled with lights from all the cities. Humans work horrible as solitary creatures. The man stranded alone on an island is going to look like a wreck in a few years even if he is in great shape, has plenty of food etc.
The main problem for naturalistic ethics is trying to establish moral norms without smuggling in a guiding purpose.
For example, we can't say that since cooperation helps us survive that it is a "good" behavior. Nature doesn't really care if we survive or not. Even our own genes don't really care if we pass them on to further generations. We either do or we don't. When we do we call it survival. When we don't we call it extinction. Nature doesn't care which event actualizes.
Ahhh but why does nature have to 'care' if we do? Or to put it another way, if atoms could talk and told us they hate animal life and human life especially would you walk off a bridge because you learn that 'nature' says it would rather you not be around? Or would you say "I don't care what the talking atoms say"?
I can't speak for others, but I believe ethics come from reason, not nature.
Are you implying that "reason" is supernatural in origin?
No, reason is neither of supernatural origin, nor a result of evolution, but, I would say, simply the use of the tools of logic to explain reality.
Someone explain to me why I should even care about doing good?
Seriously, ex-preacher, ludwig, boonton, one of you explain to me why life should even be preserved. Why can't I be Agent Smith from The Matrix and believe that humanity has the same moral worth as a virus?
Ground the value of life in a naturalistic philosophy for me, please.
No, reason is neither of supernatural origin, nor a result of evolution, but
So "reason" is neither natural, nor supernatural? I didn't realize there were more than two choices.
I would say, simply the use of the tools of logic to explain reality.
So, is "logic" natural or supernatural, or is it some third way like "reason"?
Here is where your 'just so' stories run into trouble. Instead of individuals look at larger groups. Imagine a tribe of 100 people that share a "GR Trait"
Boonton, it is kind of funny for you criticize Joe for using "just so stories" by using one of your own, and a pretty implausible one at that. Especially since you appear to concede that the "GR trait" is a best a neutral or, more likely a detriment to individuals outside a group. How do you believe these individuals with the "GR trait" survived long enough to meet and form a group?
ex-preacher says: I can't speak for others, but I believe ethics come from reason, not nature.
First, is reason a part of nature, or not?
Second, reason only works on existing data; there has to be a set of "self-evident" truths in order for reason to get started. We all have different self-evident truths, so even reason doesn't guarantee agreement on morality.
Sandy As long as the psychology of ethics is a black box, I think it unlikely that there will be a knockdown argument against naturalistic ethics, as its defenders are unconstrained by facts in the spinning of their tales.
I agree that there is no knockdown argument. In fact, I'm skeptical of the idea that anything can be "proved" to people who are unwilling to follow the logic of their own belief system. But it is fun watching them try to defend naturalistic ethics based on zero evidence or logical support. ; )
awstar Shouldn't we insist that those who believe in naturalism use terms that don't have connotations that imply supernatural intelligence?
Yes, we should. Good luck trying to make that happen. ; )
Ben Incidentally, I don't see that evolution and ethics have much to do with each other. I don't think too many people would be inclined to argue that evolution could give rise to ethics.
But that is the point of naturalism. Ethics must have come from evolutionary processes because, under naturalism, everything we are is a result of such processes.
This is where you run off the rails. Assume that in a social species, following the GR more often leads to survival than to death. Individuals in a population that always follows the GR would be better off than those in a population that never follows the GR.
That is an unlikely assumption. For starters, no one—aside from Jesus—ever followed the GR in all situations. Why base your premise on a hypothetical situation that we know has never, ever occurred?
If they become too common, they lose their relative advantage.
So what we are left with is the Greater Sucker View of Ethics. It is advantageous to convince other people (the greater suckers) that it is in their best interest to follow the GR while ignoring it ourselves. That is probably the best that naturalistic ethics can ask for.
(It's also not obvious that following the GR requires conscious understanding of the rule, so your initial setup of the situation is shaky, too. Might the Golden Rule evolve as a modification of altruistic behavior that is observed in social species that aren't self aware?)
I suppose it could. But if morality is an unconscious phenomena then the whole point is rather moot, isn't it?
Nick If philosophical naturalists want to follow the GR all the time, isn't that just as consistent as any other approach to naturalistic morality and better for us too?
No doubt it is better for all of us if they pretend like they have a reason to follow the GR. But I'm not sure the term "consistent" even has meaning in naturalism since everything is determined by the causal laws of physics and chemistry. Consistent is merely what happens.
Why do you want to convince them to be brutal nihilists instead?
I don’t think they'll suddenly turn to nihilism just because they have no reason to believe in the GR. I suspect that they'll muddle along just fine, choosing to ignore the implications because they don’t like where they lead.
Incidentally, is there another word we could use for the eeevil followers of philosophical naturalism?
I prefer the term "materialists" but I don't think they like it as much.
ex-preacher I can't speak for others, but I believe ethics come from reason, not nature.
Where does reason come from if not from nature?
I don't agree with everything he stands for, but I know this is the position of Peter Singer as well. He is not a moral relativist.
True. Singer is an inconsistent utilitarian. His views on ethics are all but incoherent.
The is-ness of evolution does not affect the ought-ness of ethics.
There is no "ought-ness" in a purely material universe. There just "is."
Reason doesn't "come from" anything. It simply describes reality. In that way it is like mathemathics, contrary to what Poythress said in the article you linked to yesterday. I think you will find that the vast majority of mathematicians and philosophers believe that both math and reason work in complete independence from any deity.
Joe Carter wrote: I agree that there is no knockdown argument.
Don't disagree, since the very people who claim to be on the side of reason rarely are. Nevertheless, I think there's a better argument to be made, namely, "how does one decide between two competing moral systems?" Reason demands that a theist get one answer and a materialist another (and yet a third for a polytheist).
First, it's important to define our terms. Everyone has a muddy definition of "good"; even the dictionary uses a circular definition. The typical attempt tries to define "good" either in terms of "better" or "best" or "not evil". But these definitions are circular, since "better", "best" and "evil" all assume the definition of good. The theist often tries to define good in terms of "God", but a) this begs the question of whether or not good can exist without God, b) God is largely undefined, and c) there is little agreement on whether or not examples of God's behavior are "good" or not.
In this case, I agree with Lord Kelvin who said, When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced it to the stage of science.
While I don't have a number scale, and don't think one can actually be developed, I submit that "good" and "evil" can be defined as the distance between "is" and "ought". The closer "is" is to "ought" then the more good something is; the farther "is" is from "ought" the less good something is.
What's interesting about this definition is that it's worldview invariant -- it doesn't matter whether one is a theist or atheist. It also clearly shows that morality is purely subjective since "ought"' exists only in the realm of imagination. It also shows that morality has the same source in both God and man (the question of what controls the imagination is left open). This puts an interesting spin on the account of Genesis with the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Anyway, since, by definition, morality is relative and subjective, an interesting question is "how can two competing moral systems be resolved?" Since morality is individual, it suffices to silence the disagreeing individual. For the atheist, might does indeed make right. God, however, cannot be silenced. For the theist, God is not right because He is omnipotent, God is right because He is eternally existent. For the theist, might enforces right.
Given the definition of "good", then these conclusions are inevitable. (Which, BTW, explains why atheist regimes tend toward totalitarianism -- it's built into the system).
Joe:
Let's try again.
You wrote:
The GR could have developed only as a response to adaptive problems where following the rule increased or had no effect on survival. When it hindered survival it was ignored (otherwise it would have caused the downfall of the species).
An evolutionary explanation does not require that the GR be ignored when it is detrimental. The GR could have evolved, even if it is followed when detrimental, as long as it is beneficial more often than it is detrimental. Do you think that following the GR is beneficial more often than it is detrimental, or has it been a net loss for you?
So what we are left with is the Greater Sucker View of Ethics. It is advantageous to convince other people (the greater suckers) that it is in their best interest to follow the GR while ignoring it ourselves. That is probably the best that naturalistic ethics can ask for.
Unless, of course, the greater suckers can detect that you aren't following the GR and ostracize you for it. Perhaps it would be better to usually follow the GR.
As an explanation, that probably has the advantage of being fairly close to the behavior that we actually observe.
>Might the Golden Rule evolve as a
> modification of altruistic behavior that is
> observed in social species that aren't self
> aware?)
I suppose it could. But if morality is an unconscious phenomena then the whole point is rather moot, isn't it?
What whole point? You were writing about the hypothetical evolution of GR-following behavior and made a sort of "irreducible complexity" argument regarding consciousness and the GR. If you admit that following the GR could be derived from unconscious behavior, that puts a damper on the rest of your argument.
Your argument today has two prongs that don't seem logically related: 1) the philosophical inconsistency of naturalism/materialism and 2) the impossibility of the GR being an evolved response. I'm uninterested in 1) and was only really discussing 2) in my first set of comments.
I think you will find that the vast majority of mathematicians and philosophers believe that both math and reason work in complete independence from any deity.
But do they believe "math and reason work in complete independence" from nature?
ex-preacher writes: I think you will find that the vast majority of mathematicians and philosophers believe that both math and reason work in complete independence from any deity.
What the "vast majority" thinks isn't any indication on the truth or falsity of something. The "vast majority" live "the unexamined life" and don't know how their foundational beliefs affect their everyday thinking.
In any case, see A Biblical View of Mathematics. I haven't read this in depth yet, so I'm not going to do anything than point to its existence.
Nick Do you think that following the GR is beneficial more often than it is detrimental, or has it been a net loss for you?
Depends. Sometimes it has been to my advantage and sometime to my disadvantage. But overall following GR has, from an evolutionary perspective, been negligible since it has not affected my survivability one way or the other.
Unless, of course, the greater suckers can detect that you aren't following
the GR and ostracize you for it. Perhaps it would be better to usually
follow the GR.
It might, but it doesn’t have to be a universal dictum. We could follow the GR at the tribal level and still think it is perfectly acceptable—even advantageous—to slaughter the tribe next door.
If you admit that following the GR
could be derived from unconscious behavior, that puts a damper on the rest
of your argument.
The whole point of the GR is that it is a conscious choice. There might be some things I do on an unconscious level that may resemble the GR but it makes no difference unless we are saying that all morality is unconscious.
I'm uninterested in 1) and was only really discussing 2) in my first set of comments.
My belief is that without (1), no one would ever bother with (2). The evidence that the GR is a result of evolutionary processes is so weak that no one would ever posit it unless it was needed as a post hoc justification for another premise (i.e., naturalism is true).
Boonton, it is kind of funny for you criticize Joe for using "just so stories" by using one of your own, and a pretty implausible one at that. Especially since you appear to concede that the "GR trait" is a best a neutral or, more likely a detriment to individuals outside a group. How do you believe these individuals with the "GR trait" survived long enough to meet and form a group?
Meet to form a group? Humans and primates have always been social animals ucfengr. The problem with individualistic stories about caveman Og is that they always begin with the unspoken assumption that Og just appeared out of nowhere with no family, no culture, no parents or history and then they ask what traits should Og have that will make him successful from an evolutionary POV. All evidence available indicates that the ancestors to humans were social animals so we were already in groups when we started hence it makes more sense to analyze traits from that perspective.
As for using 'just so' stories....we've been down this road before. Joe tends to try to prove things by exclusion. In other words, if you claimed to have been born on Mars there are two ways to disprove that statement. The first is to prove you were born somewhere else. The second way is to prove it is impossible for you to have been born on Mars. This is not so easy as there's lots of stories that are unlikely but nonetheless possible and all you need is one to ruin any attempt to establish proof by that method.
Joe asserts that the GR could never have developed as a trait. Why not? Over millions of generations I'm quite unimpressed with anyone who thinks he is so smart he can figure out all the possible advantages, disadvantages and neutral outcomes just by thinking a few minutes in his head before he posts his post.
Speaking of which:
Joe:
That is an unlikely assumption. For starters, no one—aside from Jesus—ever followed the GR in all situations. Why base your premise on a hypothetical situation that we know has never, ever occurred?
Way too binary here Joe. You seem to be making the error of the false choice. Either the GR is a trait that humans follow all the time or it is just a totally wishy washy thing that humans sometimes do and sometimes don't. In reality it is a trait that humans are more often than not inclined to follow but hardly automatic like sleeping or breathing. Your analysis of whether or not GR is a trait that could have developed through natural selection must therefore begin with GR as it actually exists in humans, not an idealized version of it.
Yeah, I probably should have expanded my thought there about the lack of connection between ethics and evolution...
Here's the thing: Suppose that human's mental faculties developed as a result of evolution. But see, once that has happened, why would evolution after that have an impact on our *thoughts*? Evolution is biological in nature, but thoughts are not biological. The medium in which they exists may be to some degree biological, but they themselves are not actually biological. So you don't evolve ethics necessarily. It wouldn't make much sense. While ideas - and hence philosophy and ethics - might change over time, but they don't do it according to the supposed rules of biological evolution.
Ben,
Thoughts are not genetic but the evolution model can fit them as well. Because we are mortal our thoughts will die with us unless they are passed down. Some thoughts are easier to pass down than others, those thoughts will survive and multiply as more and more people inherit them and pass them on. Other thoughts will die out.
Hence today we know about Plato's ideas but no one remembers the tax structure of the Roman gov't in some obscure part of Gaul. Make what you want of that.
Affirm and Support Joe in both his original post and in his comments.
Non-Christians take offense. What else is new?
The fool has said in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt,
They have done abominable works,
There is none who does good. (Psalm 14:1)
The implication of this claim is that since the "golden rule" is a universally held belief, it must be explainable by purely naturalistic processes. My contention is that belief is false and that this moral principle could not have been developed by natural selection.
This is utter nonsense. All social creatures, from bees all the way up to humans, need a set of rules to govern their conduct toward others of their own species, otherwise they won't be able to form the social orders they need to thrive and protect their young. So yes, the Golden Rule can indeed be developed and reinforced throughn natural selection: creatures that don't follow it are mistrusted and ostracized by their tribe, and thus have less chance of reproducing.
Naturalism, of course, claims that our brains were "designed" by the blind process of natural selection and that there is no ultimate purpose behind the behaviors we develop.
Like most cdesign proponentsists, you're using words very sloppily in order to misrepresent what "naturalism" is. For starters, you're failing to distinguish methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism.
Now that we understand what types of problems natural selection can solve it becomes clear that the GR is not an evolved behavior.
This is a non-sequitur.
In order to apply the GR, our ancestral hunter-gather (we'll call him Ugh) needs to possess knowledge of a cause and effect relationship (i.e., if he bashes his neighbor, Zog, over the head with a rock then Zog will die), the ability to imagine himself in the same situation (putting himself in Zog's hidebound shoes), and self-reflection in order to choose one behavior or the other based on his knowledge and imagination. Because the GR requires all of these components to be in place already, the necessary brain circuitry required for this principle could not have developed as a response to a single adaptive problem.
Your conclusion is not supported by your premise. The GR is indeed a response to an adaptive problem: Ugh would not bash Zog because a) Zog is not an immediate threat and b) he may see Zog as an ally, not a threat. Those who are hardwired to see others of their species as potential allies would be more likely to thrive and reproduce, just like those who are hardwired to avoid dung.
Ugh is stronger than Zog and could easily kill him and cause his family to starve to death. But his neural circuitry is programmed to behave in a manner consistent with the GR and so chooses not to kill Zog. Because he refuses to save his own family at the expense of Zog's, all but one of the children will starve to death. Since there are not enough males and females to propagate the race, both families eventually die off.
Or they could band together (agreeing to follow some mutual set of rules) to find new hunting ground or conquer new arable land. And, in fact, ancient history is full of examples of stronger, more sophisticated social orders conquering, exterminating or assimilating less organized tribes.
Occasional attempts are made to derive social norms from nature so conceived, but they are not likely to succeed. It is true that a variety of widely accepted norms, including the keeping of certain promises, the abhorrence of unjustified killing of human beings, and perhaps even the sanctity of property rights, promote the adaptation of human species to its environment. But so does genocide.
Richard Posner contradicts himself: first he says that attempts to derive social norms don't succeed, then he admits they do; then he tries to say that because some people get away with violating such norms, those norms didn't succeed. What he fails to admit is that large-scale successful violations of social norms are rare, temporary, and in many cases cause a backlash among those who feel threatened by such actions.
Exceptions to a rule, or variations in how it is applied, do not make the rule invalid or meaningless.
For example, we can't say that since cooperation helps us survive that it is a "good" behavior.
Yes, we can; and we do. This is an observable fact, whether you admit it or not. And by "we," I mean theists as well as atheists.
But, the naturalist will protest and argue that we do care if we survive? True. But so what?
So...a "naturalist" offers the basis for a code of conduct, a theist (you) brushes it off by saying "So what?" And you still maintain that it's the "naturalist" who can't offer a valid moral code? The only person acting "amoral" here is you.
What they fail to realize, though, is that there preference isn't any more moral than the actions of a psychopath.
I'll skip past your below-grade-school grammar, and point out that your refusal to see the difference between the morals of an ordinary conscientious person and those of a psychopath is nothing but your arbitrary opinion, hastily made up to reinforce your own prejudice, and has absolutely nothing to do with any observable reality, including the reality you discuss here. The rest of us -- those who aren't so desperate to pretend they're better than "naturalists" -- are quite well aware of the differences. That is, in fact, why the overwhelming majority of people tend to exclude psychopaths from most of the benefits of civil society.
Since there is no being that has an ontological existence higher than the individual human, there is no objective standard by which we can discern which preference is right and which is wrong.
Yes, there is: the objective, observable and predictable consequences of our actions. You've already admitted this, and now you pretend to deny it. And rational calculation of the consequences of our actions tell us that we can't have what our "personal preferences" demand (which is that everything we need and want come with no cost or effort).
Once again, a cdesign proponentsist tries to pretend that the "naturalists" he hates don't have morals, and once again he only makes himself look ignorant and amoral.
But overall following GR has, from an evolutionary perspective, been negligible since it has not affected my survivability one way or the other.
The hell is hasn't: cooperation with others has made you better able to benefit from the society in which you live; and refusal to cooperate would have got you ostracised, dissed and dismissed. If you don't believe me, just ask a convicted criminal how many opportunities he has to enrich himself and his kids. IF you need a polytheist like me point this out to you, then you are in no position to lecture others about "naturalism" and morality.
Raging Bee
So yes, the Golden Rule can indeed be developed and reinforced throughn natural selection: creatures that don't follow it are mistrusted and ostracized by their tribe, and thus have less chance of reproducing.
I would add that as an alternative they can develop into a less social species.
Boonton and Raging Bee:
[RB] So yes, the Golden Rule can indeed be developed and reinforced throughn natural selection: creatures that don't follow it are mistrusted and ostracized by their tribe, and thus have less chance of reproducing.
[Boonton] I would add that as an alternative they can develop into a less social species.
So what? Reproduction "is"; "is" is not "ought"; "is" cannot get you to "ought".
Suppose that group A decides that eradicating group B would increase group A's reproductive success. Would they be morally justified in doing so?
All of this is nonsense, anyway. Morality isn't defined by reproductive success.
All of this is nonsense, anyway. Morality isn't defined by reproductive success.
We didn't say it was. What Joe asserted was that the Golden Rule could not have arose from reproductive success. It has been demonstrated several times now that this assertion is false.
"Oughtness, may I suggest, consists in the power which a greater good has over a lesser good in compelling our choices."
-Archie J. Bahm, "Aesthetic Experience and Moral Experience", The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 55, no. 20, p. 840
(Now your next comment will be: but no one can possibly understand what good means unless a god or other ultimate authority tells them.)
Boonton writes
[wrf3] All of this is nonsense, anyway. Morality isn't defined by reproductive success.
We didn't say it was. What Joe asserted was that the Golden Rule could not have arose from reproductive success. It has been demonstrated several times now that this assertion is false.
What Joe asserted was that the GR could not have arisen from reproductive success via logic and reason. Anyone can look at what is and say, "oh, this is what ought to be and I can rationalize a path from 'is' to 'ought'". This, of course, ignores the equally reasonable statement, "oh, this isn't what ought to be and I can rationalize a path from 'is' to 'ought not'" (witness, for example, the radical ecologists who want the earth's population to be under a billion).
Furthermore, please clarify your statement "we didn't say that it was." It either is, or it isn't. If it isn't, then you undercut your statement it has been demonstrated several times now that this assertion is false.
So which is it? Is morality defined by reproductive success, or is Joe right?
ex-preacher wrote:
"Oughtness, may I suggest, consists in the power which a greater good has over a lesser good in compelling our choices."
-Archie J. Bahm, "Aesthetic Experience and Moral Experience", The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 55, no. 20, p. 840
Yes, so what? "oughtness" is what defines "good", whether greater or lesser. This is just an empty circular definition that sounds intellectual but is just more muddled thinking.
(Now your next comment will be: but no one can possibly understand what good means unless a god or other ultimate authority tells them.)
No, my next comment is that you are an idiot. If you'd actually read post 17 with a little bit of comprehension, you'd see that we all have our own personal subjective definition of good. Good is subjective, even for God.
The question is not "what is good". Rather it's "how can differing ideas of good be resolved?" What gives the "privileged" position, as it were, to that which is, by definition, subjective? What makes an authority "ultimate"?
wrf3
What Joe asserted was that the GR could not have arisen from reproductive success via logic and reason. Anyone can look at what is and say, "oh, this is what ought to be and I can rationalize a path from 'is' to 'ought'". This, of course, ignores the equally reasonable statement, "oh, this isn't what ought to be and I can rationalize a path from 'is' to 'ought not'" (witness, for example, the radical ecologists who want the earth's population to be under a billion).
I have no idea what you're talking about here.
Furthermore, please clarify your statement "we didn't say that it was." It either is, or it isn't. If it isn't, then you undercut your statement it has been demonstrated several times now that this assertion is false.
From the 3rd paragraph that Joe wrote:
1. Joe did assert natural selection could not have produced the universally held belief in the GR. This is false, it could have.
2. I refer you to my previous statement about proofs by exclusion. They are demolished the instant you produce one possible story.
Let me use the OJ story to demonstrate this once again:
The prosecutor seeks to prove OJ guilty. There's two ways to do this. The normal easy way is to prove he did it. The hard way is to prove everyone but OJ is innocent. If someone did it and everyone but OJ is innocent then that leaves OJ guilty.
Both styles are equally valid but if you're the defense lawyer the second method is much easier to demolish. All you have to do is show that the prosecutor failed to prove at least one person innocent other than OJ. Say Joe Smith. Does that mean Joe Smith did it? No, maybe it was Jane Doe or Jose or Bill. That's not the point, the attempt by the prosecutor to prove using the second method fails if he forgets to tie up just one corner.
The second style of proof, I'll say again, is valid but much more difficult. The only times I think it could be pulled off is when you have a closed situation that dramatically limits the possibilities. (An example might be a guard who is murdered inside a secured prison bus carrying three prisoners and no one else. If you can prove two of the three innocent you've proven the third guilty).
Likewise Joe attempts to assert that out of all the thousands, millions, billions of paths natural selection could follow none of them could result in a species with a "universally held belief" in the golden rule. If Joe, in this amazing feat of mental calculation neglected to explore a single possible path his 'proof' fails utterly. It isn't required that I produce a path for you. How the hell should I know? Even assuming he is correct that the GR is indeed a universally held belief among humans there might be two hundred million paths that might have produced that result out of ten billion trillion possible ones.
"Oughtness, may I suggest, consists in the power which a greater good has over a lesser good in compelling our choices."
The "greater good" for whom; and by what standard do we determine which is the greater and which is the lesser?
Now your next comment will be: but no one can possibly understand what good means unless a god or other ultimate authority tells them
Somebody has to set the rules, otherwise you are left with "might makes right".
I don't think you are an idiot, wrf, but you do come across as a bit rude. I'm sure that in person you are a very nice person.
How do we resolve differing ideas of what is good? Through the use of reason and learning from experience. That's how we got to the Golden Rule in the first place. Versions of the GR were in place in many philosophies and religions (including non-theistic ones) long before Jesus came along.
Why? Definitely not because of any god's command. And, here I agree with Joe to an extent, probably not directly as a result of natural selection. Then why? Through the use of the tools of logic and experience. This is why people from almost every nation in the world representing all sorts of divergent religions and cultures were able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That inspiring document, when compared to the Bible (especially "God's Perfect Law" in the Old Testmanet), reveals Jehovah to look like the bloodthirsty, primitive, racist, sexist, irrational, petty tyrant that the ancients wanted him to be.
By the way, for you Christians who think that without God, you would start raping, murdering and pillaging, please hold on to your belief in God. But please don't tell me that you are acting morally when it is only your selfish desire to attain heaven and avoid hell that keeps you on the straight and narrow.
"Morality based on religion is often no morality at all. If you do it because of heaven or hell, or because an instruction book told you to, it's not morality. It's morality when you have decided yourself, without benefits or threats, that this is the right thing to do."
-Alan Dershowitz
Or they could band together (agreeing to follow some mutual set of rules) to find new hunting ground or conquer new arable land. And, in fact, ancient history is full of examples of stronger, more sophisticated social orders conquering, exterminating or assimilating less organized tribes.
The problem is, this isn't an example of the Golden Rule. Part of the problem here is that folks like Boonton and Raging Bee want to reduce the Golden Rule to some group of people working together towards some common goal. If that is the Golden Rule, then there is really nothing wrong with RB's hypothetical tribe banding together and exterminating another tribe. The Golden Rule is not about people working together towards a goal, it is about individuals being willing to work against there own self interest and towards the interest of another, with no expectation of a reward. In all the examples you cite, you have groups of people working together with the expectation that all will share in the rewards. This is not the Golden Rule.
Wow, I've never seen any argument "defended" by so many exclamations of "so what?" and "nuh-uh" and "what if I just ignore everything you say?"
Somebody has to set the rules, otherwise you are left with "might makes right".
This self-contradictory statement is a perfect summary of the hypocricy of those who are trying so desperately to pretend that "naturalists" are "amoral."
In all the examples you cite, you have groups of people working together with the expectation that all will share in the rewards. This is not the Golden Rule.
Actually, yes, it is. We obey the Golden Rule, and other rules of conduct, because we observe that such obedience makes life better for everyone in a wide variety of ways, despite the short-term sacrifices required; and flouting such rules degrades the quality of nearly everyone's lives.
This self-contradictory statement
Really, why, RB?
Actually, yes, it is.
Actually, no it isn't. The Golden Rule doesn't say "Be nice to people who are nice to you". What's noble about that. That may be a Silver Rule or more likely a Lead Rule, but there is nothing golden about it.
This is why people from almost every nation in the world representing all sorts of divergent religions and cultures were able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That inspiring document, when compared to the Bible (especially "God's Perfect Law" in the Old Testmanet), reveals Jehovah to look like the bloodthirsty, primitive, racist, sexist, irrational, petty tyrant that the ancients wanted him to be.
That's a pretty idealized vision of the UDHR, ex-p. Isn't a more accurate description of it "an attempt by liberal, white (mostly), Europeans to impose their Utopian ideology on a largely unwilling world"? Heck, the document itself reflects that. Look at Article 29, Section 3, "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." So essentially, you have the right to "life, liberty, and security of person". etc. as long as it isn't contrary to the purposes of the UN. How would that be different from "You have the right to free speech as long as you don't say anything I disagree with"?
ex-preacher writes: I don't think you are an idiot, wrf, but you do come across as a bit rude. I'm sure that in person you are a very nice person.
I can be. But I typically tend to give a very hard time to people who think they know what they are doing -- but don't.
How do we resolve differing ideas of what is good? Through the use of reason and learning from experience.
That's ivory tower wishful thinking from someone who
a) perhaps hasn't had to deal with predators, and
b) who doesn't understand what reason can and cannot do, and
c) doesn't understand that people who don't share your axioms won't come to the same conclusions you do.
That's how we got to the Golden Rule in the first place. Versions of the GR were in place in many philosophies and religions (including non-theistic ones) long before Jesus came along.
I'm sure that's a nice story you tell yourself for comfort. The truth is that the GR is the ethic of those who are weak and, perhaps, also afraid to die.
Why? Definitely not because of any god's command. And, here I agree with Joe to an extent, probably not directly as a result of natural selection. Then why? Through the use of the tools of logic and experience. This is why people from almost every nation in the world representing all sorts of divergent religions and cultures were able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That inspiring document, when compared to the Bible (especially "God's Perfect Law" in the Old Testmanet), reveals Jehovah to look like the bloodthirsty, primitive, racist, sexist, irrational, petty tyrant that the ancients wanted him to be.
What this shows is that you pretend to know more than you do.
By the way, for you Christians who think that without God, you would start raping, murdering and pillaging, please hold on to your belief in God. But please don't tell me that you are acting morally when it is only your selfish desire to attain heaven and avoid hell that keeps you on the straight and narrow.
More cluelessness. It is one of the main tenets of Christianity that man cannot attain to heaven by keeping on the "straight and narrow."
"Morality based on religion is often no morality at all. If you do it because of heaven or hell, or because an instruction book told you to, it's not morality. It's morality when you have decided yourself, without benefits or threats, that this is the right thing to do."
And when someone decides that the right thing to do is kill you?
That leaves us not only with the only remaining category but also with a necessary condition for the development of the GR. The GR could have developed only as a response to adaptive problems where following the rule increased or had no effect on survival. When it hindered survival it was ignored (otherwise it would have caused the downfall of the species).
You imagine that the GR is something that must mandate altruistic behavior in all circumstances or in none. But if promoting reciprocal behavior in x number of situations increases reproductive success, but beyond x it does not, then you would expect to see GR behavior to only operate within a confined set of situations. And that is what we see with human behavior. Mostly everyone espouses the GR but practically noone obeys it in all situations. I'd say your discussion, rather than refuting a naturalistic cause for human morality, confirms how closely human morality as actually practiced, not imagined by theologians, conforms to the evolutionary scenario.
What they fail to realize, though, is that there preference isn't any more moral than the actions of a psychopath. When they say this is right they are merely saying this is my preference.
First off, you're misusing the concept of preference. Is breathing a preference? A conscience isn't something that is turned on or off at will. Consciousness is actually a small part of the human mind. Most of our behaviours are ingrained in areas of the mind that are not manipulated by preferences. Is breathing a preference?
And if God is a psychopath, then what is so moral about obeying His will? Is it any more moral for it being God's preference?
Ex-P
This is why people from almost every nation in the world representing all sorts of divergent religions and cultures were able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
ucfengr
That's a pretty idealized vision of the UDHR, ex-p.
Actually, he's ignoring that virtually every Islamic country has it's own UDHR that basically says they follow the UDHR except when it contradicts Islam and Islam by it's nature is humane. I guess they didn't get the GR gene in Islam.
First off, you're misusing the concept of preference. Is breathing a preference?
Now you are moving into a slightly different area, the area of "free will". Morals imply "free will", the ability to choose to do one thing and not another. If you take materialism to its logical conclusion, i.e. "the brain is nothing more than a physical system whose operation is governed solely by the laws of chemistry and physics", then can we even assume that we have "free will"? In a strictly material world, do we have any more control over what we do than a ball dropped off the Empire State Building has to fall towards the earth? If that's the case, why is doing "good" admirable or do concepts like "good" and "evil" have any meaning at all?
ucfengr
The difference is between what we believe is right and wrong, and what we decide to do. The latter is a matter of free will, but I'm not sure that the former is, not totally. I believe that we have ingrained moral instincts that aren't a matter of preference. But we don't always decide to obey them.
But I typically tend to give a very hard time to people who think they know what they are doing -- but don't.
And you typically have a very hard time making anything remotely resembling a plausible case.
And when someone decides that the right thing to do is kill you?
Then those who are faced with such a person will be in exactly the same position, whatever God(s) they believe in (or not).
If you take materialism to its logical conclusion, i.e. "the brain is nothing more than a physical system whose operation is governed solely by the laws of chemistry and physics", then can we even assume that we have "free will"?
We can ACT like we have free will, respect ourselves as responsible agents, and make the best choices we can under the circumstances.
In a strictly material world, do we have any more control over what we do than a ball dropped off the Empire State Building has to fall towards the earth?
Well, yeah, I have a LOT more control over my actions than a ball dropped from any height -- and this control does not depend on whether or not I believe our world is "strictly material." I had just as much free will as an atheist as I do now. As the guy said in the movie: "My soul is prepared. How's yours?"
Raging Bee:
[wrf3] But I typically tend to give a very hard time to people who think they know what they are doing -- but don't.
And you typically have a very hard time making anything remotely resembling a plausible case.
If that were the case, then someone would address the flaws in #17. Go ahead and try.
[wrf3] And when someone decides that the right thing to do is kill you?
Then those who are faced with such a person will be in exactly the same position, whatever God(s) they believe in (or not).
If you had paid attention, you would know that this isn't the case. For the atheist, the person or group who is able to impose their morality on others, by force or otherwise, is morally right. For the theist, might does not make right.
The problem is that supernaturalism can't provide an objective basis for ethics either. Is it good because God says it's good, or is it good independently of God's assent. Unless you want to avoid tautology, it's the latter, so we're back to individual judgment for ethics.
God can't get you there either, my friend. Oldest one in the book. Nice try.
yahoo writes: The problem is that supernaturalism can't provide an objective basis for ethics either. Is it good because God says it's good, or is it good independently of God's assent.
The former.
Unless you want to avoid tautology, it's the latter, so we're back to individual judgment for ethics.
How does the former create a tautology?
God can't get you there either, my friend. Oldest one in the book. Nice try.
Since you hold that something is good independently of God's assent, what is the source of this good?
We can ACT like we have free will
I can program a computer to "act" as if it had free will, but that doesn't mean it does. It is still just a computer and its actions are a function of its programming, not any decisions on its part.
Well, yeah, I have a LOT more control over my actions than a ball dropped from any height -- and this control does not depend on whether or not I believe our world is "strictly material."
If you believe that you have control over your actions, then you believe that the brain is more than a mere physical system that functions in accordance with the laws of physics. In other words, you must believe that the brain functions outside the physical laws that govern the universe.
If you believe that you have control over your actions, then you believe that the brain is more than a mere physical system that functions in accordance with the laws of physics.
Why? What is the conflict?
Just to humor you, lets say that our actions come from a supernatural source. How does that make our actions free? You're just trading a natural for a supernatural source, but in both instances the individual is subject to this source, and is therefore not free.
Just to humor you, lets say that our actions come from a supernatural source. How does that make our actions free?
It doesn't mean we have free will but it is a requirement for free will. In a totally materialistic system, you are bound, in the end, by physical laws. A leads to B leads to C leads to you having cereal instead of a Pop Tart this morning. Therefore, to have free will, you have to somehow exist outside of the system in some way. Otherwise, everything you do is just a result of cause and effect.
A computer can never have free will. Otherwise you are saying that we can design a computer where we can never determine why it took the action it did. However, it is common sense that a computer will only act based on the instructions it is given regardless of how complex those instructions are. Complexity of operation does not equal free will.
ucfengr
The Golden Rule is not about people working together towards a goal, it is about individuals being willing to work against there own self interest and towards the interest of another, with no expectation of a reward.
True which is what I think I tried to capture in my example of the tribe that shares the fruits of the individual hunts each evening. Self-interest would encourage cheating to the degree that you wouldn't get caught. The GR ethic, though, would benefit the group...especially in the long run.
Since such a tribe with a 'GR gene', if such a thing exists, would enjoy greater reproductive success you have your plausible story for how such a thing could develop through natural selection right there.
wrf3
While I don't have a number scale, and don't think one can actually be developed, I submit that "good" and "evil" can be defined as the distance between "is" and "ought". The closer "is" is to "ought" then the more good something is; the farther "is" is from "ought" the less good something is.
This is really a different topic than what Joe wrote about. Let's say the GR creates a sense of 'ought' in us and the GR is a result of natural selection. The GR may or maynot conform to what you call "good". In other words, the GR creates an 'ought' in us becuase it causes us to want to see things happen for our fellows that will not happen without an act on our part. Hence the GR says we 'ought' to share with our hungry neighbor because we want to see him not hungry and him being hungry now is an 'ought' that is created.
The first thing I'm going to say is this scheme of things is only applicable to actual choices we have. Take lobsters, from what little I understand of their behavior they essentially live by rule as opposite to the GR as you can get. Is this of any moral importance? No. I'm not a lobster and I cannot communicate with lobsters or change lobsters. There's no 'ought' there for humans at least. Perhaps if God had subcontracted out the job of creating lobsters to some junior angel there's an 'ought' that means he should have designed things differently but that, quite frankly, isn't my business.
So what 'ought' do humans have? Well the one that seems to have worked very well for our survival is the GR. Does that tell us GR conforms with the desires of a non-human superentity? No but so what? Presumably if such a superentity exists and he does not share the GR he is not ticked off enough by us using it that he wipes us from existence. Since we know the GR works, we know there's a good risk that trying something else is more likely than not going to result in either our extinction or greatly harm our survivial. If non-existence is your goal then ythe fastest and easiest way to pull that off is to simply kill yourself now. Why try to effect some unnatural behavioral change and wait generations for the harm to work its way through? Since we are all here I think it's safe to assume we don't want that. So to use Pascal's wager in a way he probably would not have liked, we might as well use the morality that works for our survival and take a chance that any larger supernatural entity is either ok with that or indifferent enough to it not to cause us problems.
Joe's position seems to be the GR is not helpful for our survival. That it actually inhibits it. This is a pretty amazing argument considering that of all species on earth humans seem to have done the best at surviving and adapting the whole planet to their existence. He asserts that:
Yes indeed nature has created that rule for lobsters. If a naturalist has invented a human to lobster transformation machine I cannot say that perhaps he should practice the Red Rule for a while if he wants to prepare himself for being a lobster. But this is not human nature and to the degree it is we observe that the Red Rule has tended to hurt more than it has helped us.
True which is what I think I tried to capture in my example of the tribe that shares the fruits of the individual hunts each evening.
But this really isn't an example of the Golden Rule. In a tribe, Zog may be willing to share the the fruits of his hunt with Ugh, because the expectation is that if at some point in the future Zog has a bad day hunting, but Ugh has a good one, Zog will share in Ugh's good hunting. Or perhaps Zog will share his bounty with Ugh because while Ugh is not a very good hunter, he is a very good spear maker or a good warrior; better than Zog. The bottom line, is that all members of the tribe benefit from the arrangement. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is really the best example of the Golden Rule. In that tale, the Samaritan helped the Jew even though the Jew was in no position to be able to return the favor and, given the state of relations between Jews and Samaritans, it is unlikely that the Jew would done the same had their positions been reversed. The GR is about selfless sacrifice, not about mutually beneficial sacrifice.
Does anyone remember Mark Twain's definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Joe's series of essays on this subject are clearly bordering on this definition. Every so often, Joe writes one of these little pieces attempting to prove the moral superiority of theists and denigrating disbelievers. This in turn causes a dust up because neither one of us can make truly strong arguments either way, and so no progress can be made.
I've got news for you. This is what is going to happen every time, and it is unavoidable. Why? Because nobody has a truly satisfactory foundation for the basis of morality. Theists want to claim that morality comes from God. That's all well and good, but it makes this morality dependent on a God that can't be proven to exist, and its also dependent on the theist's ability to know what it is this God wants of us. There are two big holes in this moral argument, and they will never be shored up to the satisfaction of someone who doesn't agree with the theist position. In short, theists can wring their hands at this all they want, but until these problems can be resolved, the presupposed moral superiority of theism is not the slam dunk that theists seem to think it is. They have faith that they are correct, not knowledge.
Non-theists, have a different kind of problem. They have to come up with a basis for morality that arises from natural or rational causes. There are a lot of plausible ways that this could happen, but its unlikely that anybody will ever be able to explain this to the satisfaction of a theist. The irony in this is that theists want some incontrovertible proof of the foundation of non-theist morality, when in fact, they can't even provide this for their own argument, yet they insist that the non-theist must provide this. That's more than just a little hypocritical.
So we're left at an impasse. All I can say with certainty is that, both theists and non-theists can be good moral agents. They don't always agree on what the right thing to do is. Neither follow their moral rules absolutely, and many make mistakes. But, interestingly enough, with the exception of certain "hot button" issues, both theists and non-theists alike pretty much agree on what good morality is. I think that's saying something. Both sides have argued back forth and claimed responsibility for the basis of the other's morality, but again, not well enough to satisfy their opponents, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.
In short, I will be ignoring Joe's posts on this subject from here on out. They are a pointless waste of time and effort, and needlessly divisive. You're taking yourself too seriously Joe, and pretending to have knowledge and authority that you do not possess.
Until you can find some common ground with non-theists, these postings will continue to boil down to lame us-against-them polemics that are not, and never have been good examples of Christian behavior.
If you believe that you have control over your actions, then you believe that the brain is more than a mere physical system that functions in accordance with the laws of physics. In other words, you must believe that the brain functions outside the physical laws that govern the universe.
ucfengr, you can't make a decent factual or logical argument on ANY subject, and now you're trying to tell me what I "must" believe? Just leave a message at 1-900-PUH-LEEZ, okay?
Let me lay it out for you in the plainest English I can manage: I try to act like a responsible agent, and "choose" to do the right thing, and not blame anyone or anything else for my actions, regardless of what you or I believe about how the brain works. Maybe my free will is an illusion, maybe not; maybe there's a supernatural influence on my actions as well as the known electrochemical influences, maybe not. Maybe the supernatural influence means I have free will, maybe it's just another deterministic force. As long as I SEEM to have free will, I will act like I have it, and try to obey the moral laws I have adopted as right. I was perfectly capable of doing this as a deterministic atheist, and I'm still capable of doing it as a polytheist listening to the voices of various Gods in my head. If you can't understand this, then you're really not fit to argue with grownups over grownup concepts such as choice and responsibility.
One more important point: just because I "believe that the brain functions outside the physical laws that govern the universe," that does not mean that this belief can be proven or verified through scientific inquiry, or that science has to change its methods to accomodate such a belief.
Boonton
[wrf3] While I don't have a number scale, and don't think one can actually be developed, I submit that "good" and "evil" can be defined as the distance between "is" and "ought". The closer "is" is to "ought" then the more good something is; the farther "is" is from "ought" the less good something is.
This is really a different topic than what Joe wrote about.
Not really. No discussion is useful unless the definitions of the things being discussed are agreed upon beforehand. Joe didn't define morality, and for morality to be profitably discussed, definitions for "good" and "bad" have to be considered. Most definitions of "good" are circular so everyone ends up saying a lot, with most of it being worthless.
Let's say the GR creates a sense of 'ought' in us and the GR is a result of natural selection. The GR may or may not conform to what you call "good".
All this means is that NS (if it produces anything) produces different "oughts" in us, which means that NS produces different moralities for us. So whether the source is NS or the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, morality is still purely subjective. Which is what I said.
In other words, the GR creates an 'ought' in us becuase it causes us to want to see things happen for our fellows that will not happen without an act on our part. Hence the GR says we 'ought' to share with our hungry neighbor because we want to see him not hungry and him being hungry now is an 'ought' that is created.
I don't think this is right. The GR doesn't create the 'ought'; it provides a rational for dealing with an ought that already exists: 'ought I feed my hungry neighbor?'
In any case, if NS produced the GR, it also produced "enlightened self-interest", which gives the answer "only if it benefits me in some way" (which isn't the GR, BTW). It produces "might makes right", which gives a different answer.
So, even if NS produces a sense of ought, this sense isn't universal. It's still subjective and still leaves the unanswered question, "which/whose 'sense of ought' is to have the privileged position?"
The first thing I'm going to say is this scheme of things is only applicable to actual choices we have. Take lobsters, from what little I understand of their behavior they essentially live by rule as opposite to the GR as you can get. Is this of any moral importance? No.
Depends. You can always ask the question, "ought lobsters live the way they do?" Maybe you're mad at God and think He did a lousy job of design so you'd give "no" as the answer. Maybe you're a naturalist ethicist and are considering applying animal/crustacean behavior to humans.
I'm not a lobster and I cannot communicate with lobsters or change lobsters. There's no 'ought' there for humans at least.
Then why do people want to use selected Bonobo behavior, as just one example, as a model for humans to emulate?
Perhaps if God had subcontracted out the job of creating lobsters to some junior angel there's an 'ought' that means he should have designed things differently but that, quite frankly, isn't my business.
Except this question is no different from the theist's "headache" of the problem of evil; or the atheist's "headache" of the problem of good.
So what 'ought' do humans have? Well the one that seems to have worked very well for our survival is the GR.
Now look what you're doing. On the one hand, in a previous post I think you affirmed that survival is not the basis of morality, yet here you say that it is (or maybe you sidestepped it, earlier). On the other hand, you are using pragmatism as a basis for morality, when you and I know that's a post-hoc reason. You're trying to justify your subjective 'ought' when, by it's very nature, you can't do that.
Does that tell us GR conforms with the desires of a non-human superentity? No but so what? Presumably if such a superentity exists and he does not share the GR he is not ticked off enough by us using it that he wipes us from existence.
And so you're faced with the problem of evil -- would such a superentity be good in doing this? Or must we conform our 'ought' to it's? What decides between two competing moral systems?
Since we know the GR works, we know there's a good risk that trying something else is more likely than not going to result in either our extinction or greatly harm our survivial.
So what? You're assuming that survival is good; why should anyone share your purely subjective assessment?
If non-existence is your goal then ythe fastest and easiest way to pull that off is to simply kill yourself now.
Or my goal, like that of a male lion, is to ensure that only my progeny survive, so maybe I should kill you?
Why try to effect some unnatural behavioral change and wait generations for the harm to work its way through?
So much assumed in so little a space. First, who says it's unnatural? Second, when did pragmatism become the basis of morality?
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Joe's position seems to be the GR is not helpful for our survival. That it actually inhibits it. This is a pretty amazing argument considering that of all species on earth humans seem to have done the best at surviving and adapting the whole planet to their existence.
Given the relatively sort time frame that humans have been around, this is certainly a myopic species-centric view. Insects will survive a nuclear war better than we will, for example.
He asserts that:
[Joe] In an ethics rooted in naturalism, morality is simply the name given to the set of preferences of the person or group with the most power.
This conclusion is absolutely correct, as I showed via a different line of reasoning in post #17.
[...]
Yes indeed nature has created that rule for lobsters. If a naturalist has invented a human to lobster transformation machine I cannot say that perhaps he should practice the Red Rule for a while if he wants to prepare himself for being a lobster. But this is not human nature and to the degree it is we observe that the Red Rule has tended to hurt more than it has helped us.
You are confusing what 'is' with what 'ought' to be. 'is' does not give rise to 'ought'.
I try to act like a responsible agent, and "choose" to do the right thing, and not blame anyone or anything else for my actions, regardless of what you or I believe about how the brain works.
If the brain is a system that functions strictly according to the laws of the physics, you can't "try" to do anything. You either do or don't do based on whatever external forces are acting on your brain at the time. You may as well say that Hurricane Katrina tried to hit New Orleans.
Maybe my free will is an illusion
In a strictly material world, there is no maybe about it. For there to be free will, your actions must be controlled by something other than the laws of physics.
As long as I SEEM to have free will, I will act like I have it, and try to obey the moral laws I have adopted as right.
If you have no "free will" you have no choice in the matter anyway, so what you will "try to obey" is irrelevant.
But this really isn't an example of the Golden Rule. In a tribe, Zog may be willing to share the the fruits of his hunt with Ugh, because the expectation is that if at some point in the future Zog has a bad day hunting, but Ugh has a good one, Zog will share in Ugh's good hunting.
All that is required here is that Zog believe he should not cheat even if he could get away with it. What Zog actually does is irrelevant. Likewise it is also irrelevant why he thinks he believes what he does.
What you're trying to do is to define the GR as to require absolutely no benefit to the person behaving well. If you think about it this b