Materialism of the Gaps sub-discussion: the morality debate

Your question of why should you or anyone care about this issue would apply to most all of the threads in this forum. Of course it is an end-around play to trivialize the issue we have been discussing. The reality or unreality and truth or falsity of these things matter to some people for reasons that mostly have nothing to do with practical advantages in life. Whether or not there really is meaning and purpose to life, for instance, or whether or not there is a human spirit independent of the physical body (however hard it is to understand its nature), or the linked issue of whether the purposeless random variation-driven mechanism of Darwinism explains all of life including our own existence, are important to some people even though they are not practical issues that they can do anything about.

Your point of view does seem to me to be somewhat incoherent. You invoke reincarnation of some personal spiritual essence as being real while at the same time you seem to espouse some major elements of the belief system of evolutionary psychology, which holds that we are nothing but smart animals, all that makes us human evolved (by a Darwinistic mechanism), and consequently that there is absolutely no such thing as a spirit or soul. It seems to me that you only can have it one way or the other - you can't have both. Perhaps I misinterpret, however.

It's not incoherent, you're just separating these things whereas I'm trying to integrate them. I see no reason they can't all exist together. There's no reason souls couldn't also evolve since evolution seems to be all about survival. In fact it would make less sense for there to be no souls or reincarnation or similar than for it all to be just this life given the absolutely massive advantages they would have, at least for the soul. Although this will be my last post on the issue here.

As for the feeling of morality, well, all it takes is two people looking at the same actions while seeing them on different sides of the moral spectrum to put that to bed. Honour killings being a good example, The muslim thinks it's good and moral to do, others not so much, boom, not objective. clearly the feeling is triggered from something else even if they think it's "morality."

That one person has rationalized evil doesn't mean that a genuine Objective Morality has nothing to say in this regard, especially the Dispositional Objective Morality I am proposing as a possibility. That there are Muslims who oppose the practice of honor killings on these grounds - that the practice is a rationalization not in line with the faith - would show at least the possibility that the first group is misguided.

And of course you've opened the door to this very argument - that a side can think they are moral but are confusing morality w/ some feeling - by allowing we can second-guess moral feeling...but this example, again, doesn't mean there is no such thing as objective morality anymore than one person being stubbornly wrong about a mathematical proof invalidates logic.

Feelings on their own mean nothing, it's only when they're coorelated with something else that they can be used as evidence of that thing. And even then, contet changes all that, people suffering heat stroke feel cold for example. I've had so many premonition feelings that felt so certain that never ended up being true that I just ignore the feeling now. I don't know or care what causes it since it's never done anything for me.

But mathematicians have felt their way toward the correct proofs. If feelings can lead to the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus that gives us so much technology they seem to mean something?

As for what morality is correlated with, democracy + law & order count as as something I'd think? 

At this point I have thoroughly squashed the idea that morality can even possibly be objective and have no interest in continuing.

Well just because you feel that way doesn't mean it's correlated with the Truth.

There's no logical evidence for it, it is in fact it's own logical fallacy:

http://www.friesian.com/poly-1b.htm

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tool...ic-Fallacy

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tool...ic-Fallacy

Actually no, I don't think the Moralistic Fallacy is saying anything at all about whether there is an Objective Morality. Rather, to me, it shows the fallacy of ideas like People who are virtuous age slower presented without any supporting argument or evidence. The issue is saying what ought to be true is not an argument for that particular "ought"'s reality.

If anything the fallacy arguably presupposes at the very least some moral order, otherwise where is the "ought" coming from?

So it's dead in the water anyways.

Well you might feel that way but this doesn't make it so. At the very least I'd consider the fact this question has gone the rounds for a good deal of human history...This idea of personal gnosis leading to knowledge of Reason+Mathematics and the Good goes back at least to Plato in the West after all...

There's no empirical evidence for it, not even a shred

There's no empirical evidence for Logic either. In fact this very idea you seem to be proposing, that what's real has to be verified empirically is called Verificationism and it collapses because there's no empirical way to assert Verificationism is true.

If this is your core argument then Logic is as fictional as Morality. In which case all forum discussions attempting to appeal to our rational dispositions are merely sophistry, just like the proofs of the properties of triangles are clever manipulative persuasions...that, to me, is very hard to believe.

All that said, I'd agree that people have used the idea of Objective Morality to justify their own gustatory/arbitrary feelings of desire/disgust. But of course to even make this argument against Objective Morality would be an actual invocation of the Moralistic Fallacy (and ironically enough also an appeal to some kind of transcendent moral order), because the fact that the idea of Objective Morality has lead to evil doesn't make it false.

But at the same time I think we as a species can dispense with wars over Scriptures where people want to enforce particular supposed Objective Moral Necessities by looking at the Objective part as Moral Dispositions where the Telos, or Final Causation, is based in how one would act if they felt genuine Love for the Other and the Self...and if we say Love Other as Thy Self we might even begin to reconcile Morality and Selfishness in the way Typoz suggested earlier in the thread...

Though even the idea of it all turning on Love is just a passing possibility though it might align well with certain potential metaphysics (again, see Ian Thompson's work) + some evidence from NDEs + mysticism.

I can’t see morality as being very much like logic at all.

I think they're in the same class of "things" for which we can't use empirical evidence to prove, and for which we use an intuitive sense to figure out.

Beyond that I'd agree they're different, though interrelated at times.

A question, because I've forgotten half the thread, and am too tired to think clearly, or scroll back through to see if it has already been answered:

How precisely is "objective" and "subjective" defined? How are "ethics" and "morality" defined? In the context of this devolved thread, anyways.

Because I get the vague feeling that we're using different internal definitions that are causing a misunderstanding, and so, disagreement.

According to my own definitions, ethics and morality are purely subjective, based on the observation that there are endlessly nuanced opinions on basically every subject, and that basically no-one shares exactly the same set of opinions, not being exact clones, so how could ethics and morality ever be objective? What would an objective morality and ethics even begin to look like? When we try and talk about objective morality and/or ethics, do we really just mean an inter-subjective morality or ethics based on being able to feel empathy for another's suffering?

For those who cannot feel empathy and who do not flinch at the thought of torturing or murdering someone painfully and slowly, ethics and morality have no real meaning, nor do they know nor care that they're doing anything they consider as wrong.

Maybe I'm tiredly overthinking this?

Thoughts? Opinions?

I'm finding this discussion interesting though somewhat difficult to follow because I have yet to sort out some of the contradictions and misunderstanding that have encumbered my own thinking on this complicated subject. I would like to suggest, however, that the morality debate is given its own thread because the OP was a list of "gaps" that nbtruthman suggested to illustrate a point that some would claim, possibly without justification, to have been filled by materialism. Morality was just one item on that list but has dominated the thread. I'd also like to see this particular debate widened so that it is not just concentrating on Mediochre's assertions and so that we can explore aspects of the argument such as evolutionary psychology, darwinian self-preservation and a possible climate of cynicism surrounding public discussion of morality and ethics.

Note to Mods: if you decide against my suggestion of splitting the thread then I may go ahead and start a thread based on that last sentence above.

A question, because I've forgotten half the thread, and am too tired to think clearly, or scroll back through to see if it has already been answered:

How precisely is "objective" and "subjective" defined? How are "ethics" and "morality" defined? In the context of this devolved thread, anyways.

Because I get the vague feeling that we're using different internal definitions that are causing a misunderstanding, and so, disagreement.

According to my own definitions, ethics and morality are purely subjective, based on the observation that there are endlessly nuanced opinions on basically every subject, and that basically no-one shares exactly the same set of opinions, not being exact clones, so how could ethics and morality ever be objective? What would an objective morality and ethics even begin to look like? When we try and talk about objective morality and/or ethics, do we really just mean an inter-subjective morality or ethics based on being able to feel empathy for another's suffering?

For those who cannot feel empathy and who do not flinch at the thought of torturing or murdering someone painfully and slowly, ethics and morality have no real meaning, nor do they know nor care that they're doing anything they consider as wrong.

Maybe I'm tiredly overthinking this?

Thoughts? Opinions?

For myself I'd agree trying to delineate a set of rules for the absolute correct thing to do in every circumstance, and then insist this can be achieved by reading some particular book, is folly.

And of course it must be acknowledged the idea of Objective Morality gets a bad rap due to religions across history using the concept to get around moral objections to their evils by making God the bad guy. So there is a desire to avoid giving cover to people who want to enshrine their personal prejudices as Platonic Morals.

But I look at Objective Morality as a disposition toward certain actions over others within the context of certain situations, basically starting with Love as a possible motive force in the moral sphere. It might even be the case that Love itself is essentially the recognition that the Many are, in some sense, One - that this Oneness is what fuels our moral outrage when witnessing great evil.

Or perhaps it's more pluralistic than that, with motive forces being aspects of the Good -> Compassion, Justice, etc...but Love does seem to come up often enough in theology, in NDEs, in mysticism...

I'm finding this discussion interesting though somewhat difficult to follow because I have yet to sort out some of the contradictions and misunderstanding that have encumbered my own thinking on this complicated subject. I would like to suggest, however, that the morality debate is given its own thread because the OP was a list of "gaps" that nbtruthman suggested to illustrate a point that some would claim, possibly without justification, to have been filled by materialism. Morality was just one item on that list but has dominated the thread. I'd also like to see this particular debate widened so that it is not just concentrating on Mediochre's assertions and so that we can explore aspects of the argument such as evolutionary psychology, darwinian self-preservation and a possible climate of cynicism surrounding public discussion of morality and ethics.

Note to Mods: if you decide against my suggestion of splitting the thread then I may go ahead and start a thread based on that last sentence above.

Ah good idea, sorry I replied to Valmar before seeing your post. I'm happy to move the convo over to a new thread!

[Ninshub]

I would like to suggest, however, that the morality debate is given its own thread because the OP was a list of "gaps" that nbtruthman suggested to illustrate a point that some would claim, possibly without justification, to have been filled by materialism.

Done (hopefully OK!).