Ethics, Morals and Atheism

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Fnord
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10 Apr 2013, 1:59 pm

Vigilans wrote:

The only way to operate on the premise that Christianity is a morally sound religion, an example to follow, is by excessively cherry picking out all the parts that don't fit your own conception of what the religion is and your own system of values that, like it or not, exist independently of any spiritual deity

Replace the word "Christianity" with "any religion", and we'll be in complete agreement.

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ruveyn
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10 Apr 2013, 2:00 pm

thewhitrbbit wrote:

As an aside, when I refer to religious morals I am thinking things like the 10 commandments.

What about the other 603 Commandments in the Hebrew scriptures?

The Big Ten are not the most important.

The following is the keystone of the Torah: You shall love/regard/respect your neighbor as you do yourself. That is the key to Jewish ethics. This is located the book of Leviticus, chapter 18 I think. It is in parshat K'doshim using the Hebrew scriptures.

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kouzoku
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10 Apr 2013, 5:05 pm

Tao.

Steinhauser
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11 Apr 2013, 9:44 am

I am an atheist. I believe in objective and universal morality, and I believe morality can be discovered rationally.

Like any ordered system of knowing about the world, a viable moral theory should have two characteristics:

a) It should be internally consistent. If an action is deemed morally justifiable or unjustifiable, that classification should hold true for that same action under different circumstances - the rule should be applied universally. If an exception to the rule of universality is made, it must be shown how the exception's circumstances change the moral nature of the action. Then that exception is applied universally to all actions under those circumstances, until a justifiable exception to the exception is found. Etc.

b) It should predict outcomes. Empathy and the conscience are unreliable and subjective, but they're the only sensory tool humans have of detecting morality, and they're innate, not cultural. (Babies as young as 10 months have a sense of justice.) A moral theory should therefore confirm at least the most basic moral principles that almost every human can identify: That murder, theft, rape, and assault are immoral. As stated in point A, it should begin by applying these axioms universally, and justifying each circumstance wherein they could be considered moral.

The best secular, rational theory of morality I've seen is Stefan Molyneux's theory of Universally Preferrable Behaviour.

ruveyn
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11 Apr 2013, 10:22 am

Steinhauser wrote:

I am convinced there is something in the way the human brain works that produces an impulse toward rectitude.

I looked up Virtue on Wikipedia. The set of virtues identified by a half dozen cultures and religions all over the world, past and present overlap at least 85 percent. That tells me there is something in the way we are fashioned by nature that guides our moral and ethical sight.

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Steinhauser
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11 Apr 2013, 10:31 am

ruveyn wrote:

I agree. Deep down, most people know what is right and wrong, at least on a personal level (between peers of an in-group).

The problem comes with the exceptions. Frequently this is based on the relationship not being peer-to-peer, or in-group-to-in-group.

For example, "Murder is wrong, but it's not wrong for the king to order someone's death." Why? Or, "Murder is wrong, but it's not wrong to kill a member of an enemy army." Why? There are cultural stigmas that put the peasant subject, or the enemy combatant, on the list of exceptions. A rational look is then required to justify why someone being born of a certain bloodline, or born in another part of the world, should change the moral nature of the action committed by or against that person.

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11 Apr 2013, 10:42 am

Morale is for me a kind of law, that people create themself, that advantages themself. If you live in peace and harmony with your neighbos, you have yourself advantages from it. While if support murder, robbery, try to grab all money to you by legal and unlegal ways, making your neighbors poorer, it is more likely that you will live in a neighborhood, where you yourself with suffer from other peoples violence.

To live in peace with yourself, you also have to live in peace with your neighbors, and your neighbors have to live in peace as well. If you manage that, you will live a happy life.

GGPViper
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11 Apr 2013, 10:57 am

If morality is objective and universal, then it must be a fact, and thus subject to scientific enquiry.

How, then, does one prove or disprove the claim "X is morally wrong"?

The_Walrus
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11 Apr 2013, 11:03 am

How would you prove that all bachelors are unmarried using scientific enquiry?

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11 Apr 2013, 11:21 am

The_Walrus wrote:

How would you prove that all bachelors are unmarried using scientific enquiry?

I would specify the empirical conditions for (A) a bachelor being married and (B) a bachelor being unmarried. Given the universal claim "all bachelors are unmarried", a single instance of (B) would be sufficient to disprove the claim according to the logic of falsification.

However (assuming that the word bachelor is to be understood in the narrow sense as an unmarried person, and not as a person with a bachelor degree or a young knight following the banner of another knight... or some other alternative definition of the word) no observation would satisfy the condition of (B).

The claim "All bachelors are unmarried" would then be non-falsifiable, and thus empirically meaningless.

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11 Apr 2013, 11:25 am

GGPViper wrote:

If morality is objective and universal, then it must be a fact, and thus subject to scientific enquiry.

How, then, does one prove or disprove the claim "X is morally wrong"?

Without an objective sense (the way the scientific method has the objective senses of sight and touch, for example) to establish an objective baseline of comparison, it is impossible. The best we have is a subjective sense (empathy/conscience) that can be used to approximate, which I claim is justifiable in the extreme cases of murder, rape, etc.

However, what CAN be assessed through reason alone is internal consistency. If it were not be possible to prove or disprove "X is morally wrong," it would still be logical to assume that whatever its moral classification, all permutations of action X share that classification by default. So without knowing whether X is wrong or not, you can still start with the logical assumption, "if X is morally wrong, all versions of X are morally wrong."

In order to conclude a permutation of X (Xa) does not share its classification with all other instances of X, it must be shown how Xa differs from all other instances of X. If those differences are sufficient to change X's moral nature, they can be applied to other actions. So Ya's relation to Y should be congruous to Xa's relation to X.

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GGPViper
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11 Apr 2013, 11:41 am

Steinhauser wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

If morality is objective and universal, then it must be a fact, and thus subject to scientific enquiry.

How, then, does one prove or disprove the claim "X is morally wrong"?

But some people do kill and rape (and steal, drive while drunk, cheat, assault people, vandalize property, listen to pop music etc.). So in their subjective sense (assuming they have control of their faculties), these things must be just dandy. How is this compatible with objective morality?

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11 Apr 2013, 12:27 pm

GGPViper wrote:

Steinhauser wrote:

Generally, the people who kill or rape are sociopaths, or have some other psychological damage that affects their ability to feel empathy. To say murder isn't objectively evil because people without empathy can't empathize with their victims is like saying photons don't objectively exist because the blind can't detect light.

If empathy were not a natural aspect of the human condition, and could be proven to be a social construct, you might have a point. But newborn babies can empathize. So can the 96% of the population who are not sociopaths/psychopaths. A lack of empathy is an aberration, a handicap that prevents those afflicted from knowing morality the way blindness prevents the blind from knowing sight.

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GGPViper
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11 Apr 2013, 1:02 pm

Steinhauser wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

Steinhauser wrote:

Generally, the people who kill or rape are sociopaths, or have some other psychological damage that affects their ability to feel empathy.

Why is deviance from a norm (inability to feel empathy) a valid moral reason for dismissing the subjective views of killers and rapists? Isn't this just an introduction of another claim of objective morality (lack of empathy is morally wrong)?

Steinhauser wrote:

To say murder isn't objectively evil because people without empathy can't empathize with their victims is like saying photons don't objectively exist because the blind can't detect light.

Photons can be observed through scientific experimentation. How do you observe the objectivity of evil?

Steinhauser wrote:

If empathy were not a natural aspect of the human condition, and could be proven to be a social construct, you might have a point. But newborn babies can empathize. So can the 96% of the population who are not sociopaths/psychopaths. A lack of empathy is an aberration, a handicap that prevents those afflicted from knowing morality the way blindness prevents the blind from knowing sight.

From a scientific perspective, wouldn't that mean that killing and raping was 96 % wrong, and 4 % right, rather than 100 % percent wrong?

And isn't the statement "A lack of empathy is an aberration, a handicap that prevents those afflicted from knowing morality the way blindness prevents the blind from knowing sight." just an introduction of another claim of objective morality, as per above?

The_Walrus
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11 Apr 2013, 5:08 pm

GGPViper wrote:

The claim "All bachelors are unmarried" would then be non-falsifiable, and thus empirically meaningless.

Whilst I would agree with this conclusion, I would disagree with any attempt to say that unfalsifiable statements are lacking in worth.

I think "meaningless" is thus misleading, and would prefer "unscientific". Karl Popper took a similar view in Conjectures and Refutations :

Karl Popper wrote:

I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical."

Of course, Karl Popper wasn't necessarily right about everything.

What about the statement "Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii"? No science experiment can prove or disprove that, but there's little doubt that it is a fact.

Steinhauser wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

Steinhauser wrote:

Naturalistic fallacy. As David Hume observed, "is" does not logically lead to "ought".

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11 Apr 2013, 5:42 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

The claim "All bachelors are unmarried" would then be non-falsifiable, and thus empirically meaningless.

Whilst I would agree with this conclusion, I would disagree with any attempt to say that unfalsifiable statements are lacking in worth.
I think "meaningless" is thus misleading, and would prefer "unscientific".

And how is this anything more than semantics? If I had claimed that it was purely "meaningless", you would have a case. But I claimed that it was empirically meaningless. Since you have clearly read Popper, you will know that this is a massive distinction...

The_Walrus wrote:

Karl Popper took a similar view in Conjectures and Refutations :

Karl Popper wrote:

I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical."

I could not care less. I admire Popper for his presentation of the logic of falsification, thus providing a more rigorous and scientific version of the views of David Hume. He has made a lot of other claims (like the Wittgenstein quote about visiting lecturers) but they are of little interest to me...

The_Walrus wrote:

Of course, Karl Popper wasn't necessarily right about everything.

I believe I owe you an apology.

Only Hume was right about everything. Irony.

The_Walrus wrote:

What about the statement "Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii"? No science experiment can prove or disprove that, but there's little doubt that it is a fact.

The experiment is just *one* example of testability.

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