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Morality — Biological or Philosophical?
loid_void writes to mention The New York Times is reporting that Biologists are making a bid on the subject of morality. "Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book 'Moral Minds' that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, 'Primates and Philosophers,' the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
they have done many studies recently that links anger to genetics among other human behaviors. So yes i think it would be biological. Look what the drug companies are doing with these depression fixing drugs. Is it not actually fixing your morality? Yes it is.
for explaining why the brain seeks out morality, but says nothing of why any given action is moral or not.
Morality got started when we finally figured out that it isn't nice to throw poop at one another.
What remains to be seen is where the one starts and the other begins.
You might be able to prove to me that great apes & monkeys have this sense of "humanity" or--for lack of a better term--"monkey-anity." Like the basic tenants of it where you don't kill babies or you starve yourself if it saves someone like you.
But I'm going to find it hard to believe that monkeys have an advanced sense of specific morals like you should or shouldn't file share because it helps or hurts the artists.
I haven't read both these books and I've only briefly read the article but I would find it interesting to understand how our morality evolved or how localized concepts came about. I guess it also has implications connecting us to animals which I don't have a problem with because I don't eat or kill these animals. This news might anger some people but don't tell me that you've never seen a good dog adhere to morals that seemed to be ingrained in them.
I'd like to see this area explored but I think the biggest issue is that morals are often anecdotal or localized making them hard to quantify or generalize. It's the same way with the human race, so don't be so surprised. More power to these researchers even if all they are doing is documenting cases of basic morals in animals.
My work here is dung.
Your Honor, my client is not guilty by reason of a genetic deficiency that prohibited him from acquiring moral acuity.
Read any good sonnets lately?
with all kinds of religious ideas and such.
If you just think of it as a cooperation strategy, with "moral" being defined as "behaving in a way that benefits others", it's all quite simple, and it should be obvious that animals have a form of morals too.
Humans are social animals. All social animals, whether wolves, lions, chimps or humans have rules of conduct. Human codes of conduct tend to be much more complex, but that's because humans live in far more complex social structures than virtually any other social animals. What seems, in my view, to be ingrained into our neural wiring isn't a specific moral code, but the need to fit within a hieararchy, and this requires rules.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I can only guess that you are being sarcastic here? If you actually believe that morality based on religious laws from 2,000 years ago are good enough for you, then surely you must believe that slavery is all right, it's acceptable to stone non-believers to death and women are property. After all, it was good enough for people 2,000 years ago... Please tell your post was sarcastic.
In his book, The Moral Animal, Robert Wright used evolutionary psychology to explain how morality developed and why, back in 1995. It's an excellent read up until the end when he tried to close on an optimistic note. Up to that point, he presented a pretty cynical view of human motivation...
Definitely a fascinating read and an interesting topic. Combined with Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, one could end up feeling the urge to find a remote cabin in Idaho and stockpile it with food and guns, and withdraw from the world.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
I don't see how you can argue there isn't a biological component to the sometimes vague concept that is morality. Extremes tend to highlight fundamental truths which are muddled in the averages.
1. There are obviously beings who are born sociopaths, which no amount of positive socialization or negative reinforcement can temper.
2. There are obviously beings who are born moral/ethical, which no amount of negative socialization can remove.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Anybody with an interest in behavioral science who has spent time around dogs knows that, much as the religious Right likes to dismiss it (because they want humanity to have a unique place in the universe - Christian humility doesn't count here), dogs have behavioural patterns that it is easiest to interpret in human terms, still without excessive anthropomorphising. They may have them at the average human two year old level, but they have them. And is it surprising? Over the vast periods of time that cover the evolution of modern animals, there must have been a huge amount of opportunity for genetic makeup to develop which produced governing mechanisms of social behaviour. For dogs, the development of a pack-based society with strong internal rules seems to have worked out rather well, if only because it has fitted in in a kind of symbiotic way with human society. Currently we in the West seem to be in the middle of a vast experiment to create a society which rejects those mechanisms and regards only selfish individual behaviour as having merit. I wonder how it will all turn out? Tears before extinction time, I suspect.
Pining for the fjords
Bad event -> Bad reaction -> Bad event... eventually it gets back to you.
This is an interesting discussion and I've heard this argued many times as theory, especially by those pushing a religious interpretation of "absolute morality".
On the other hand (and as TFA points out), the key word is empathy. Without empathy, social structures cannot exist. If everyone and everyone is solely self-interested, groups of cooperating individuals could never thrive as they would be destroyed internally by conflicting self-interest.
However, to claim that there are *specific* moral rules that are hard-wired is a bit silly, since it can be evidenced that there are a great many cultures in human history that use generalizations to appease the natural sense of empathy, while doing acts that would otherwise trigger an empathic reaction.
For example, cultures which practiced human sacrifice justified it by either portraying those sacrificed as "not quite human" or as "chosen by god" (being an honor, not a sacrifice). The Moors in Spain categorized Christians as "infidels" and were therefore justified in burning them by the thousands. The Nazis convinced their people that Jews were "subhuman" and people therefore often felt vindicated at sending them to their death. Blacks in pre-civil war America (and some time afterwards) were also seen as "subhuman" (legally, actually 1/3 of a person) and therefore slave owners were justified in treating them as domesticated animals.
Even today, we see the phrase "not quite human" bandied about to refer to criminals, especially murderers and sex offenders, to appease people's sense of empathy when calling for them to be "skinned alive" or "sliced into little pieces" as two well known political bloggers recently and eloquently demanded of pedophiles caught in the act.
However, our sense of morality is not so solid as one might think. Using the same example, for almost a thousand years, pederasty was not only a tolerated condition, but actually an expected behavior amongst social elite. Not only was it accepted by it was celebrated. Death has been similarly consecrated into social norms in past societies with warrior cultures killing merely for the sake of killing and maintaining their warrior culture.
Our sense of empathy may be ingrained. In fact, it may be essential to our humanity, but empathy is not so firmly defined as a set of "thou shalt not" rules and can't be assumed to imply those either.
I still contend that the (often religious) argument "all humans have some hard-wired moral rules" is a sham, created to perpetrate the spread of ignorance on controversial topics. We should always question our judgments using our intellect... because that is really what separates us from other mammals.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Completely side-stepping the science vs religion argument that is waiting to erupt, I feel like the most base morality does have a place in society and is probably biological in origin. For instance, one moral tenet might be "don't be an asshole to other people". The biological programming behind this may simply be that humans have instincts similar to animals that recognize (after millennia of trial and error) that if you intentionally prey upon someone else, you will eventually run into another creature that will fight back (and potentially win). As human beings, since we don't have to naturally prey on each other in terms of eating each others' carcasses for nourishment, other sorts of (morally unnecessary) preying upon humans often will do nothing but cause unneeded conflict in both people's lives.
It seems like a philosophical moral concept (i.e. "the golden rule"), but the reality is that if you're an asshole, you may well get stomped to the curb (or worse). Same goes for other extremely base moral concepts... in fact, trying to vocalize other examples of what is considered moral behavior, I realize that the majority of it boils down to the aforementioned tenet. When not taken to dogmatic extremes, it appears that almost all basic morality illustrates circumstances where if you commit a certain act, you may face uncomfortable repercussions; if you simply treat some situations with restraint and / or respect, you will easily avoid said uncomfortable repercussions.
-Rylfaeth
i think people are smart enough to figure out what is right & what is wrong without the idea of god & religion, i think binding morality with god & religion created a weakness = when people know it is wrong to steal and rape & murder with out having to believe in a higher power...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Isn't this just another case of Nature Vs. Nature? That is a huge discussion in terms of child rearing, with no side being the clear winner because there are aspects of both that effect how people act.
I don't see any difference here. There are some things that are most likely inherent biologically, such as the fear of being chastised for doing something against the societal norm. Of course, that norm has to be put in place by society, but the fear is a function of biology.
There are some criminals with seemingly no morals that lack something in the brain that would cause them to have this valid fear.
If I kill someone, we can discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that society places a moral judgement on my action, whether it was murder, self-defense, execution, warfare, etc, and we can ask about the details of that judgement. It seems like biology is beginning to have a heck of a lot of interesting things to say in this discussion.
We can also discuss it in the context of morality in the sense that we can argue over whether I should have killed that person. This question seems to be inherently unscientific. Biology can certainly motivate this sort of discussion- for example, if killing is a behavior that natural selection has placed in our genes, this might be intensely interesting to discussing whether I should have killed a particular person. But ultimately, whether I should have killed that person is a scientifically boring question (unlike whether I will kill another person, which could be very interesting.)
It seems like this article doesn't make this distinction, but talks almost exclusively about the former type of discussion.
These from memory:
"The two things that amaze me are the starry hosts above and the moral law within...." -Kant
"The great paradox is humanity's deep desire to do right, and their total failure to do so...." -Lewis
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Its my belief that morality evolved out of the painful realization that if we could do something to someone else, then it stood to reason that other people could do it to us. When early man came to this realization, he also discovered to his surprise that it wasn't quite so funny when it was his house being burned down, his wife screwing the neighbour, his guts in a pile on the ground, or his loot disappearing over the hill on some other guy's horse. Most moral codes boil down to some version of the Golden Rule (treat others like you would want to be treated). This leaves aside wacky religious rules that really have nothing to do with morality and everything to do with imposing a social structure on people (ie - pray on Sundays).
Life needs more saving throws.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a good thing we're not descended from monkeys and apes then, isn't it?
I find this to be another offshoot of the whole "nature vs nurture" thing. All of these things are partially biological (and thus uncontrollable) and partially learned. I think the problems come when people insist it's either one OR the other.
isn't the idea of morality different to what is considered to be good or bad at a given point?
Jack V All the IT vacancies in one place
The word used in the article is "emapthy".
They demonstrated a clearly ingrained sense of empathy.
Morality is simply a social construct we create in order to better frame a universal set of actions expected to appease the empathic response of most people.
morality is still entirely a social construct.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
From physics: It is easier to destroy a thing than to create or maintain a thing (in the face of entropy, the one-way stream).
Therefore a moral would be that "constructive" ideas, thoughts, works are better than "destructive" ones. Work against the stream. Being lazy is the devils work. Etc, etc.
Constructive'ism:
* To conserve what can be conserved.
* To help those that need help.
* To maintain, that which can or needs to be maintained.
* To build, that which can be built.
* To seek out, that which can be found, and to determine the limits of all knowledge.
All these are "good" in terms of a positive impact on society and individualism.
The flip side is being destructive, the lazy path. Consider all the amount of "positive" work lost when the planes stuck the twin towers on 9/11. Making a bomb is easy compared to the work to build that which a bomb can destroy.
This is one way to measure moral'ness.
It may be true that the biologists should be the ones to "say" (i.e. determine) what the rules for acquiring a moral is, but I would think philosophy would have a little more to say about what should be a moral (beyond, say survival of one's genetic line).
It's aesthetic. Some patterns just please us better than others.
This is basically Chomsky (Universal Grammar) but applied to morality. So human morality has some universal set of rules which are isomorphic to some biological mechanism/structure in the brain. The reason that there is a common "universal morality" is not because these moral statements are True but rather we all share a common mechanism for creating these statements. A mechanism that was shaped by evolution.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I have had the opportunity to meet Dr Hauser via a direct transatlantic videoconference link with Harvard, while he was presenting his newest research conclusions to our private university here in EU. He explained to us the Web questionaire he used, his methodology, and various moral dilemmas he devised to find patterns in moral judgement, and how brain damage to specific areas of the brain altered this judgement. I think that from his findings it is obvious that there is physiological basis of morality, but I am afraid that many people may confuse judgement with behaviour. Hauser's research (at least the part he presented to us) focuses on moral judgement, which may not predict moral behaviour in all cases, so have this in mind when you delve into his research, that judgement and behaviour are two different things. Hauser demonstrated that all humans share common moral judgement, but the actual behaviour exhibited may not correspond to it due to various situational factors.
That really seemed like the end of the argument to me back in 1990, so much so that I jacked in my psychology degree, dropped out of university & left rural Ireland for London and a job scouting for rock bands.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
How are these two assertions obvious?
You can't prove something as fact ("He's bad and no amount of positive or negative reinforcement can temper that") with negative proof ("That's true because he's always been bad and always will be."). All it takes is one good choice by your 'bad' person and this is proven to be false. No matter how many bad choices he makes, it is still just a theory which hasn't been disproven yet.
Additionally, there is no way of observing whether a person is making immoral choices through their actions. There's always the matter of doubt as to whether the person was actively deciding to do what was bad or simply trying to do what was good and failing.
Saying that bad brain chemistry absolves someone from any responsibility for any particular action is a dangerous thing. Similarly, people who make good decisions deserve praise for their decision itself, rather than praise for being the puppet of 'good' brain chemistry.
Outcome != probability.
I, personally, prefer to think of biology as a factor in probability - with bad biology increasing the likelihood that a bad person will make bad choices, but each individual making their own decision whenever presented with a choice. Practically speaking, sometimes the odds are skewed to the point where they're insignificant enough to call it obvious in everyday conversation, but not for idealogical proofs.
Morality is doing what you think is right, ethics is doing what society thinks is right.
Morality is only loaded with religious ideas if you are a religious person, or believe in those religious ideas independently.
"moral" being defined as "behaving in a way that benefits others"
"behaving in ways that benefit others" is almost altruism (which is putting others needs before your own), its the opposite to egoism (putting your own needs before others).
Altruism can be moral and ethical, egoism can also be moral and ethical, it depends on the individual and the society.
That gets at an important distinction we need to make when we're talking about this subject. There are the moral principles themselves, and there are the creatures who think about or attempt to live by those principles. So, the various questions to ask:
1.) Where do the moral principles themselves come from? What is their nature?
2.) Why do human beings care about morality?
3.) How do human being learn about moral principles? To what extent (if at all) is morality hardwired?
So, if you're going for an evolutionary explanation, you'll probably answer 2.) by saying that at least the desire to be moral comes from a biological mechanism. (You may say that the principles themselves are also hardwired.) And you'll probably answer 1.) by saying that the content of the moral principles simply reflects that which is evolutionary advantageous. Things that tend to damage the community "fitness" tend to be regarded as "immoral".
If we look at sociopaths, we would then say that they have a broken mechanism for 2.).
And if you're going to accept this explanation of morality, you have to give serious consideration to whether the phrase "That was wrong" really belongs in your vocabulary. In this view, it's hard to see how you can claim that "evil" actually exists. You can say that a murderer, a genocidal maniac, or a rapist harm the community's chances of survival, and that you don't like it, but that's really about it. Any feelings of moral repugnance you may have are of little significance. If you meet a sociopath who just doesn't care, then there's nothing you can appeal to that would let you condemn them--you can't justify why they should care about community survival.
I'm not saying this is a reason to reject the explanation. If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. But we should think clearly about these implications.
Morality is neither a product of biology or philosophy. It is a product of culture and society. What may be "moral" by one person's or culture's standards may not be by others. Ex: The eating of cattle/red meat in Hindu culture versus the American, or even to say one society's soldier is another's terrorist. Morality and ethics beyond that point do not exist. They, like time and space are perceptions/concepts of consciousness.
To say that our brains evolved 'morality' is looking at a complex object and assigning it a single value. Morality can be explained as a combination of individual preferences combined with group association.
We have preferences and so do other people. Also, in order to work as a group we have to care about the preferences of others. It should come as no surprise whatsoever that we have parts of our brain which respond well when we fulfill the preferences of others. If we didn't we would be anti-social and it is much more likely that even if we aren't directly targeted by other humans, we wouldn't get their help and thus these traits are reinforced in the population.
The big questions about morality are how plastic our preference creation process is and how our empathy develops. I would venture to say that even though our brain is wired for the processes needed for morality that the connections with other thoughts and behavior can vary greatly even with identical genetic predispositions. Once again, we find that the nature/nurture debates of last century are largely meaningless and that the reality is that nature+nurture, indivisible, is the correct path.
Yes and no. From a purely philosophical view, morality (more accurately Morality) is a universal set of binding principles. Relativism and subjectivism both cannot be allowed because they can ultimately reduce to individual ethics and thus nihilism.
Not according to most definitions. I pulled this from Wikipedia Morality refers to the concept of human ethics which pertains to matters of right and wrong -- also referred to as "good and evil" -- used within three contexts: individual conscience; systems of principles and judgments -- sometimes called moral values --shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community; and codes of behavior or conduct morality.
Personal morality defines and distinguishes among right and wrong intentions, motivations or actions, as these have been learned, engendered, or otherwise developed within each individual.
Well, everything about the mind is inherently genetic. But depression drugs fixing your morality? I wasn't aware that chronic unhappiness was immoral. So the seriously depressed are evil, bad people? Thanks for that awesome insight!
It may sound persuasive to you to say that not believing in God means that there is suddenly no right or wrong and we can do anything, but real atheists, with very few exceptions, don't really believe that. And for every exception (Pol Pot and Stalin come to mind) I can give you more examples of people who thought God wanted them to commit atrocities. Hitler, Torquemada, Jim Jones, David Koresh, and so on. Yes, some power-mad wackos are atheists, but the fact that there are also plenty of power-mad wackos who believe in God should tell you that the atheism isn't the root of that particular problem. It happens that there are murderous psychos in the world, some who believe in God and a few who don't, and all of them bring their own beliefs, or lack thereof, to the table with them.
And we don't really think you're stupid, any more than you think people who believe in Shiva or Mithra are stupid. Yes, Dawkins is mouthy. He's one Oxford zoology professor who is rather vocal about his atheism. When the President of the USA says that religious people whouldn't even be considered citizens (like Bush Sr. said about atheists when he was President) then you may have a case. But even then, it falls a bit short of true intolerance or persecution. Dawkins is entitled to his beliefs. If Christians enjoy the right to think that Dawkins deserves to roast for all eternity in a lake of fire, I think he's entitled to think this is a crazy, illogical, and sadistic doctrine.
I am moral, but not religious.
If I do (or don't do) something for someone else, benefiting that other person, then I have done some good. I do not do good for love (or fear) of a god or any god-like entity, I do it because I am moral.
I'll agree that what certain religions consider good or bad is somewhat debatable, but at the very least, they give immoral people some sense of duty (towards their god/gods/goddesses).
But my point here is that morality and religion are disjoint concepts: even though religion may instill some morality, one can be completely moral and completely atheist.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
It's just instincts. We instinctively consider violence against others to be wrong. We instinctively consider helping others to be good, especially family and those who resemble them. More specifically, we feel empathy when other people suffer, and that conditions us to avoid actions that might lead to that suffering, almost as surely as if that suffering had affected us. That's the purpose of the empathy response, it's what makes "do unto others ...." a basic biological imperative.
Very important distintion about the GP post. Risk != Give. By and large when people risk their lives they don't actully lose them. As a whole that then increases the survivability of the social group. Thus Morality in that sense has a group evolutional advantage. The group with fire fighters will out produce the group without.
Not that I have read that many of them yet, but here is one of my favorite books on ethics and morality, free online version: http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp
No "we" didn't...and I would not want to live in your country. The United States was founded on laws that encourage and sometimes mandate morality. Those would be based on biblical principals. It is too bad this country is heading so far away from those that the founding fathers would have a hard time recognizing this country. Both sides of the isle suck at it. Both sides having serious moral problems. Yet neither side is looking at why that is, they are too busy pointing fingers.
These arguments are interesting,... if one is interested in them.
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My suspicions are that they can all be "diagonalized," i.e., shown to be infinitely foolish by a deeper, more infinitely foolish reasoning.
If I had a real job (and weren't such a coward), I might be more respectful of those that don't hold their chains so tightly.
-- but wadda i know???
I wasn't there, but according to historical legend....
"Late in 1977, Adele [Godel's wife] became incapacitated due to illness and so could no longer cook for Gödel. Due to his paranoia, he refused to eat any food at all and thus died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He weighed 65 pounds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gödel#Death [nasty umlauted url]
Look what the drug companies are doing with these depression fixing drugs. Is it not actually fixing your morality? Yes it is.
Doubtful, depending on your own definition of morality and ethics.
For example, it is possible to generate a coherent system of ethics and morality based on the axiom of "survival". However, to keep it from degenerating to the level of Daffy Duck (It's MINE I tell you! MINE! All Mine!!), you have to make it multidimensional, including such things as art, money, culture, sex, family, tribes, ecology, etc. as separate dimensions. Such sophistication is probably not hard wired into the biology.
Of course, you are free to delineate your own list of dimensions and definitions thereof. For example, I would definitely include Geek as a tribe, seen well in the rival clans of Torvalds vs Gates. Such an exercise is useful, and possibly educational.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I have had the long time belief that death, to a degree, is psychological. Some people die because of system failure. The rest die because they choose too. I got all excited thinking someone did a study on my wacky belief.
What about the Euthyphro dilemma? Plato made a pretty damn good argument that regardless of anything else, theological ethics is going to necessarily compromise the entire idea of an all powerful god.
The noted thinker Pierre Boulle wrote this seminal work on the human qualities of primates way back in 1963.
The great philosophers Jack Barth and Mark Kirkland teamed up in 1996 on this collaborative effort.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Interesting comment since it's consistent with the Christian religion.
... ...
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Love God
Love your neighbor
Jesus
All Christian morality reduces to these
There are millions of examples of staggeringly comblex behaviors which are somehow built into various species. We call them instincts.
Why should we think that we don't have instincts? Given the complexity of our brains, compared to birds for example, why wouldn't we expect our instincts to be even more complex?
Personally, I wonder what kinds of human vocalizations and body movements have instinctual significance. Is there a branch of behavioral science devoted to instinct? What might be the differences in behavioral dispositions in the different breeds of the human species?
"Morality" is evolved behavior - same thing as in other primates.
Like... If you're the same species as me, but slightly different (different color, different beliefs) then you're from a different tribe so you're my enemy (competition) and I'll have to kill you. If you're of the same tribe/color/nation/belief as I am, I'll be kind to you because you're genetically close to me.
Now some people (a minority unfortunately) transcend that and actually *think* about it. Ever heard of a guy named John Lennon?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Why is behaviour we find in animals so often simply assumed to be "hardwired" or genetic?
Are animals incapabable of learning, or of simple reasoning?
Dogs can learn a lot of things. They can learn their names (i.e. they'll come when you call out to them), they'll learn to sit or roll over on a specific command, they can be trained for all sorts of things, they will also learn what is desirable behaviour (do something, get a treat) vs. undesirable behaviour (do something, get slapped on the nose).
So is it that far a stretch to say that a monkey, dog, cat or dolphin (any higher mammal really) can also learn social constructs, even simple "morality" i.e. a code of conduct?
What's clear is that to learn and reason about these kinds of things we need higher brain functions. But that's ALL that really needs to be "hardwired" or genetic. Genetics is *NOT* the only way to pass down survival traits & skills.
Maybe monkeys have some sort of "morality" not because morals are genetic, but because they have the same type of brain function that allows them to reason and think about certain things the same way humans can.
Unless of course you think humans are somehow superspecial, and the only ones capable of learning & thinking (in a very broad sense), so that everything that exists in animals that can be observed in humans must be genetic. I don't buy it though...
One of the reasons language is so useful is that everyone has the same understanding of words. While those may be your definitions of "morality" and "ethics", they are not the dictionary's definitions; they are not common definitions; and they are not useful.
This is akin to saying "Bob Dylan is only associated with music if you like Bob Dylan". Again we're dealing with actual definitions of words here, not your definitions of words.
In many governments there are two types of laws. One set changes frequently, and the other, less frequently. The difference is based on impact and consensus.
Morals too follow this trend. Some change daily, such as how to dress and what words to use, and the respect shown to others, some, however, change much more slowly, such as where is the line that starts stealing or murder.
Actually, in this case, "morals" just means "acceptable social behavior". Whereas laws usually refer to objective situations, morals refer to the highly subjective, and thus not able to be effectively governed by normal laws.
Many people, however, use the word "morals" to refer to a different sort of rule. They use it to refer to absolutes "right"s and "wrong"s, defined by an entity they define as completely objective. These people are being highly subjective in their choice of definer, but past that they do not involve themselves in the definition process.
When talking about such things, i wish there were a clear definition in between these two types. Though we may all only choose one of these groups, they definitely represent to very different things.
Have you read my journal today?
It all comes down to definitions, not surprisingly. What's morality? Good luck on that one. In general, though, there are those big two camps: vaguely utilitarianism stuff, which says that whatever works best for some set of goals is moral, and vaguely rule-based stuff (Kant, etc) which say that there's some set of rules that must be followed, and that there are no set goals. It's just right or wrong. If we take the utilitarian-like approach, biology has an obvious effect for certain goals such as cooperation, harmony, and survival. It's easy this way. Motives and even awareness of what's being done is irrelevant. Traits such as empathy tend to help social animals help each other (although sometimes, it obviously backfires if chimps go lemming and jump in water and drown trying to save each other). Any individual possessing traits that help work together or survive will tend to pass it along. Not much debate there. I think it's also pretty obvious that animals are capable of showing behavior we find morally right, if only by chance or some external mechanism (say, evolution - empathy, again, acts as an example). Of course, there may be other goals of morality, but the examples they gave generally seemed to revolve around these two goals. The last possibility is, of course, that rule-based philosophy is right, and there really are a set of rules. In that case, it seems obvious it's outside of the realm of biology. Biology may help them achieve certain rules that happen to have similar goals/consequences - say, working together. But in this case, what is and isn't moral is not defined by biology. It just is.
Read some travel guides, and they will consistently point out that predominantly Buddhist countries are consistently the safest countries to travel through, especially for women traveling alone. So unless they have inherently better genes than their neighboring non-Buddhist countries (where genes have undoubtedly mingled), the statistics would seem to point to upbringing, laws, and community having a more significant impact than genes.
"the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
He's wrong about the basics, of course - primate hierarchical social structure arises from basic primate (indeed mammalian) nature - in other words, the fear of death - combined with the relatively high (among animals) developed level of neurophysiology.
The primary characteristic of all living things (at least those with sufficient nervous systems and neurophysiology as to be aware of it) is the fear of death. That fear governs virtually every action of higher animals - especially primates.
Social behavior is almost entirely organized around avoiding being killed by other members of the social group and to a lesser degree organization of other survival behavior. This behavior takes the basic two forms of all animal behavior: fight or flight, aggression or submission.
All any morality does is attempt to set up a framework under which conditions and actions are specified to govern aggression and submission.
And there is no such thing as "morality" per se - except in the pure abstract conceptual sense. There is merely a SET of "moral philosophies" which differ (frequently radically) from culture to culture.
Read Georges Bataille for more insight on the nature of taboo and transgression.
The basic idea that morality results from primate nature is of course true.
Here's an equal truth: the earth revolves around the sun.
Now what do you do about it? Pat yourself on the back for being a "moral creature"?
That's all this stuff is intended to do - justify somebody's notions of morality to their benefit.
Meanwhile, the monkey shit keeps flying - all justified by the monkey's "moral code".
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There is a difference between behaving in a manner that is not destructive to yourself and others and morality. Morality is an imaginary concept that was discovered by the more intelligent to exploit the less intelligent in primitive cultures (via religion) unfortunately it has persisted in many forms to this day.
There is no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad; at least beyond correct or incorrect actions within a specific context. It would be incorrect to use a deep voice to give a Mike Tyson impression but it isn't innately evil to use a deep voice only incorrect within that specific context.
Almost everything we consider immoral was considered moral or morally neutral within a culture somewhere in the world at some point. The common ground is only seen with moral concepts that are required for any society to function in an orderly fashion so they do not present evidence for innate morality.
>Yeah, that must be why religious people are so much more moral.
Oh yes, there are so many examples...
Radical Jews
Radical Islamists
Radical Christians
Certain catholic priests in New England
The German churches during the Third Reich
The crusaders
I'm sure I forgot a couple million.
As they say, God is great, it's just his ground staff that sucks.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
He was saying survival instincts were the basis for certain religious practices, based flawed logic or not. He wasn't saying it's wrong to (eat) pork, he was saying that when people saw the apparent consequences of the action, they figured (incorrectly) that it was bad.
If you introduce a new dog into your house, they may either play fight or real fight each other. Then the result is one is more dominant than the other. It wasn't biological who taught one was superior over the other, aside from size, but enviornmental: Who won the last big fight. Now with humans, it is much more complex, a person's entire life determines if they're going to become an A student and get a white collar job, or if they're going to go for what seems to be easy money by slinging drugs. Not everyone studies philosophy, but everyone has a philosophy.
God spoke to me.
Anyone who is intested in this subject or thinks this is something new should read Paul Lawrence Farber's The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics . It's basically a history of science trying to derive moral structure from the biological world for the last century and a half. It's an interesting book. Unfortunatly, it is a slow dry read as well.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Or are you saying that we need to rehold the Scopes Monkey Trials yet again?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Some may be interested in reading The God Delusion http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins /dp/0618680004/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-2415610-8971103 ?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174513222&sr=8-1 by Dawkins which goes into religions' impact on society as well possible explanations of why religion may have developed in societies.
It seems that every couple weeks an article shows up where I think, 'someone should mention The God Delusion.' Suprised that more have not read it...
At the most primitive level people have an innate desire to survive.
From birth humans must depend on each other to survive. A baby without a mother would certainly die. While the mother tends to the baby, someone else must tend the mother, perhaps the father. This hierarchy of dependence defines morality.
If the father didn't take care of the mother, the mother wouldn't be able to take care of the baby and the family would die off.
It's "wrong" for the father to abandon the mother. It's "wrong" for the mother to abandon the baby. Why? Because the group will die off.
Now let's grow the family into a tribe. Why is it "wrong" to steal food from another? Because if you steal food, the tribe might lose members. If the tribe loses members, the tribe might be able to survive. Why is it "wrong" to hurt other members of the tribe? Because if members get hurt, they could die and result in the downfall of the tribe. Why is it "good" for people to work hard and "be kind" to each other? Because mating requires dependability between people.
When people lived in the wild, everyone in the tribe counted. There is a high dependency between. If one faltered, then the tribe as a whole would suffer. For example, Five person would hunt, two person would cook, two would look after the young, two would go get berries, one would keep the fire going. By getting along (being moral), the tribe would have a better chance of surviving.
Now lets grow the tribe into cities, countries, world. As society gets bigger and bigger there are more people that a person has little or no dependence to. How do you deal with the situation where a person meets someone only once in their life? How should that person act? Society has created laws to deal with this. But these laws are simply an evolution of tribal code that allowed the tribe to survive.
To sum it up, morality evolved from the desire to survive. If people were invincible(could not be hurt or die for any reason), could reproduce on their own and were totally independent from each other, would we have morality?
>biblical principals
Who are those?
>Both sides of the isle
Which isle? Hawaii?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Basically, humans being communal animals had to live in small groups to survive effectively. Generally in the earliest instances this would be a family of hunter-gatherers, slowly building to a collection of united and distantly related families forming tribes and clans, and eventually small stationary communities (with the advent of crop cultivation and animal domestication). In these small communities, activities that would benefit the survival of the entire community would obviously be advantageous, so altruistic and empathetic behavior is evolutionarily selected for.
Members of a community obviously benefit from interacting with each other cooperatively, but when they encounter another community of individuals to whom they have no particular familial or cultural allegiance, their behavior can be quite different. They could behave cooperatively, and possibly benefit from sharing of resources and information, or they could act hostilely and directly benefit from the immediate acquisition of their resources and territory. Communities that behaved aggressively with their neighbors would obviously have a greater chance of annexing territory and resources and growing in strength (until they came up against another community stronger and better equipped than themselves). So communities generally have different standards for violence perpetrated within a community than for violence perpetrated between one community on another (i.e. murder and theft is wrong, but killing and pillaging is encouraged in war). Communities that believe they are superior and have a right to other societies properties will generally be much more successful at conquering and assimilating other cultures. This explains why humans are generally xenophobic and ethnocentric.
Now within these communities, a certain level of selfish behavior is also afforded, where individuals who are willing to steal from or otherwise exploit their neighbors to better ensure their own survival gain a small advantage within the community. This is only possible so long as the majority of the community remains cohesive and cooperative (otherwise the society breaks down and everyone has to fend for themselves again). So naturally enforced norms against such antisocial behavior also arise naturally, and this sort of behavior can be observed in chimp and gorilla communities today. So there is a competition of empathetic behavior that ensures the survival of the community as a whole, and selfish behavior which aids in the survival of the individual within the community. So of course all humans are selfish to some degree, because being willing to ensure one's own survival is obviously advantageous, but it is generally mainly selfish behavior that comes at the expense of the community or other individuals that is frowned upon. In general, most people are both generous and selfish to varying degrees. The degree to which we may be generous generally depends on how much empathy or allegiance we feel to another individual (we are much more likely to be generous or self-sacrificial for a friend or family member than an acquaintance or stranger).
Eventually, as the communities become more sophisticated in language and ritual, the general empathetic and selfish behaviors become formalized as moral rights and wrongs, or as official rules and laws. But along with this formalization and sophistication comes the clever individual's ability for manipulation. Since human communities are largely dependant on leadership and hierarchical structures, and in many cases it is selfish traits that allow one to assume such high ranking positions, the rules written by such leaders can often tilt the odds in their own favor. Rules can be written in some societies to benefit the opportunistic few, at the expense of the community at large. So rules ensuring dynastic wealth and authority are set in place in many societies.
So from purely biological origins, morality can arise. This is why there is generally universal agreement between different communities on obvious things such as theft and murder. But other more arbitrary rules can arise depending on the specific culture, history, and circumstances of any particular community.
This guy makes all sorts of conclusions and sweeping statements based on nothing more than...his opinion. His general implication is that there is some sort of innate 'biological' morality in all of us...which seems counter intuitive at best. For example, most pagan pre-Christian cultures have practiced human sacrifice, cannibalism, infanticide, genocide, euthanasia, slavery, murder for entertainment, etc. These are all things that the Christian gospels are opposed to and the widespread practice of these types of things has gradually declined over the last two thousand years with the spread of Christianity. Yet Hauser would have us think that this decline is due to some sort of genetic code kicking in. All of us are 'bloodthirsty' savages at heart and there is no avoiding that. Hauser needs to get out of the cocoon of the academic environment and travel a bit.
I can't believe the line of reasoning the article takes... it does not follow that if morality grew out of evolutionary behavior that biologists should get to say what is right and wrong. There are systems of morality that exist which have nothing to do with evolution. Many flavors of consequentialism and deontology don't seem to share all that much with the biological evolution approach.
That we are capable of thinking morally is undoubtedly a trait of our biological evolution. That we have moral thoughts is not. Perhaps tens of thousands of years ago these two concepts were more closely related but I sincerely doubt this still holds today.
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
Why can't it be a product of both?
Sure, there are some people who have biochemical anger reactions that are stronger and/or easier to set off than others, but those people can still learn to control their anger, it's just harder.
By the same basis, some people are better learners than other, which can be a product of the biological predisposition that determines attention span and various other things. Actually, I should rephrase that to say that some people are better learners under a given environment (which in many cases, is a common environment for many during childhood at least in regards to the education system). Now, those people may grow up learning very little, or they may discover a way to learn that better fits their attention spans, and thus come out with a lot. Drugs can also help in some cases, affecting conditions like attention deficits etc, but the overall result is a combination of the input method used and that acceptable (kinda like finding the right plug)
By the same token, those with anger issues, or social issues, can find ways to integrate into normal society. However, there may be the extreme case where there is simple no known input method to teach morality to a given individual, nor is there a method to adjust his/her biochemical "plug" so that it can receive input in a known way.
And we don't really think you're stupid, any more than you think people who believe in Shiva or Mithra are stupid.
Please don't speak for all atheists as if we are a unified homogenous group with the same beliefs. That's a bit silly. The most annoying thing about being an atheist is that some wack job (not that you are) starts speaking for you. Especially since a lot of these wack jobs are on some sort of antireglious soap box pissing people off. As a result when you mention that you are an atheist you are, in some peoples minds, equated with the last wacko they heard from.
This discussion is logically flawed. Morality is, by definition, baseless. As soon as you discover a utility for an action, then it is no longer a moral action, it is a useful action. A moral choice might coincidentally be useful, but if the choice is made BECAUSE it is useful, then it is not a moral choice.
All these people who want to find an evolutionary basis for morality are not really talking about morality anymore; they are perhaps talking about instinct, a concept which may help to describe genetically based behavior that doesn't always have an immediately obvious selfish motive. Yet the desire seems to be to find the motive. This is not morality.
This idea is frightening to many people, the idea that morality cannot be logically justified. But where is the altruism in committing an act which you can logically justify?
In the end, morality is more about esthetics than anything else. It is about, 'that is not the kind of world I want to live in,' which is an essentially esthetic judgement. And while there are certainly evolutionary underpinnings for our esthetic faculties, the use of them to make moral choices is inherently irrational, which is as it should be.
Don't get me wrong; I believe that we ought to be able to justify our actions as far as possible, but the problem is that this can often paralyze us into inaction if we reach the end of the logical chain of reasoning without finding a sufficiently rational underpinning for our choices. Ironically, once we accept that morality is baseless it can often free us to just go ahead and 'do the right thing'.
Emotions are simply a rapid, subconscious form of thinking. They stem from our explicitly and implicitly held values, and do not represent any "instinctive" sense of right or wrong.
"Morality" is a framework of principles and standards regarding proper and improper behavior. The issue of morality only arises for human beings, because for most other animals, the proper course of action is automatically determined by instinct. A set of ethical principles is neither possible nor necessary for a non-rational being.
The story equates morality with self-sacrificial behavior, or altruism. In fact, that is a particular moral theory - the other major theory being egoism. The key question in ethics is "who is the proper recipient of values?" Religious theories hold that to be a supreme being, collectivists hold it to be the society or ethnic group, altruists believe that it is anyone by you, and egoists hold it to be themselves.
To arrive at the proper beneficiary of your action, you should begin by asking - why do humans need a morality? Does something about human condition make a set of principles for our behavior necessary, or can we survive by acting on the whim of the moment?
For example, take: killing=bad
However...
- killing animal=less bad
- (unless the animal is cute
- killing for food is better
- maiming is bad, but hunting for sport is good.
Add to that... killing people=badMorality is one of the trickiest and least simple/straightforward subjects out there, regardless even of religion.
YIHAPD (Yes I have a Philosophy Degree) and you don't need future states for some types of morality, in the case of Greek virtue ethics or some forms of Kant's moral imparitive.
You see a situation and then imagine what a "hero" would do in that situation. So in the case of running away from battle, you may ask yourself "Would Hercules run away?" So you'd stay and fight. Perhaps the most pop form is the Christian form, which is "What would Jesus do?"
While there is imagination involved, there's no reason animals wouldn't be able to ask themselves "What did my mother do when X happened?" and make moral decisions on that basis. The caveat is that Greek theory casts the net wide in what is moral: whether to eat an apple or an orange can be a moral question in the same way as should kill my brother. Secondly, it's culturally dependent. If my "hero" is Stalin, killing or censoring those who disagree with me becomes not only a morally neutral action, but a moral commendable action.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Biology may (one would imagine, with enough development, almost certainly does) hold answers to how we, in fact, acquire and follow particular moral systems,
Philosophy addresses what belief systems it would be best for us to follow and acquire, not how we acquire and follow them.
People pretending there is a conflict are either trying to fake up controversy to sell books, to advance an agenda in some petty personal academic "my field is better than yours" conflict. The two fields don't address the same questions.
I'm sure most of our sexual taboos come from the fact human children, unlike any other species, need to be taken care of for at least 5 years since birth. Marriage, family values, monogamy, etc. may arise from this.
Acceleration on Earth due to gravity is about 9.8 m/s, regardless of whether our belief in that fact is biologically pre-disposed.
If morality is objective, is it then fair to say that it's objective existence (or lack thereof) is unrelated to whether or not we're biologically predisposed to recognize it?
In the beginning God's presence alone was enough to illumine our minds to morality but as evidenced by the account of creation as God 'was away' Satan's directness overtook our ability to recognize and follow the moral code of good which is inherent in God. After our this failure, the fall of man, God codified the laws of moral action in the ten commandments and eventually these were corrupted by the governing bodies and politicians of the time, scribes and pharisees. Because of this corruption of the laws which were written in stone God presented himself to us as a human example of morality and provides the Holy Spirit as a mediator between the past existance of Christ and the present understanding of what is moral so that even though we directly can not see the model being we can learn / read of Him and understand how to relate what we learn to today.
but ol' boy has it covered. Suffice it to say that both morality AND philosophy are biological. Everything about us is biological. It puts the "grrr" in girl, baby.
What?
Robert Heinlein has been trying to tell people for at 48 years now that a moral code, for it to be consistent with nature, must be based on the instinct for self-preservation, and that higher forms of morality are reached through the development of high forms of preservation. Family, community, nation, species, and so forth. He went so far as to describe (thought not in a very detailed fashion) a system of morality that was rooted in these ideas and constructed on logical, scientific principles, and he makes a very good case.
Go read Starship Troopers. Ignore the less than insightful pundits out there who would have you believe that Heinlein was a militarist and a fascist. Curse Paul Verhoeven.
Starship Troopers, at its core, was a treatise on morality, not a bug hunt. I frankly find it disturbing how many poepl fail to recognize this simple fact.
If morality is just an evolved set of best practices and we are all going to die, and that's the end of it... why behave "morally" all of the time? It would seem that you only really benefit from those positive experiences you have during your lifetime and that you would want to maximize those at all costs. If you can steal $10 billion dollars and not suffer consequences worse than the benefit then do it...
Those who chose to limit their actions are weak. Either they cannot exercise there will on others in order to obtain their own personal satisfaction because the other individual or a group would exact consequences great then the benefit they would gain, or they are internally weak and their emotions and feelings override their quest for ultimate satisfaction. If you felt guilty about stealing the $10 billion for the rest of your life then you should probably not do it... of course your guilt and feelings, your empathy, is a personal weakness. You had the opportunity but because of your weakness (possibly evolved?) you cannot attain the higher level of satisfaction.
An evolved morality means there is no real "right" or "wrong" those are simply labels applied to actions, the effectiveness of those labels is determined by the consequences others have the power to enforce.
If there is some external force that governs "right" and "wrong" (God, gods, karma, The Dharma Initiative, etc.) then morality matters... if not, then all that really matters is what you get caught doing that other people have power to make you suffer for.
Individual ethics is not 'nihilism'. Nihilism may be a particular person's response to the lack of a more general moral framework, but this is not a universal reaction. I've known many people with 'individual ethics' who had a far more rigid self-imposed moral code than most people who subscribe to the more 'universal' principles which you describe. Also, while I agree that relativism can often lead to very slippery notions of morality, subjectivism can be intensely moral. It just appears somewhat frightening and dangerous to others, but is no less moral for that.
Based on bible? Not even. More based on Magna Carta and western, liberal thought.
Toms Paine and Jefferson both despised Christian thought. Jeffie called the bible "dunghill" and Paine wrote one of the most scathing rebukes of Christianity in Age of Reason.
Read up...our founders aren't what you think...the Constitution endorses slavery (3/5ths)
A rose is still a rose and atheism is still religion. You want what religion wants, you just don't want the organ that performs the fuction. Remove the heart and demand bloodflow. Castrate the gelding and demand it bear fruit. Atheism is quaint. It is the jazz of religion. It is faith for the proud. Remove the word and read the beliefs -- what's the difference? Atheism wants the same morality as religion. We both, as you rightly point out, are chocked-full of failed examples. Religious people failing? murdering? commiting wrongs? Concur. Most prophets in the bible were extreme failures in all of these ways. Saints once sinners, prostitues converts, rising, falling, failing -- sounds like a human life to me. Still, you cannot escape Kant's moral law within or Lewis' paradox of desiring what's right yet failing utterly to do so.
b olition1.htm
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/a
En de nux
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Is mathematics biological or metaphysical?
Is logic biological or reasonable?
Is reason biological or sensible?
Is fruit an apple or an orange?
My opinion is that these so-called "scientists" are pushing a moral agenda that is merely wearing biology as its latex glove. It looks to me like a media-endorsed reincarnation of the various licentious systems, this time based in the recently popular thinking that morality is subject to and arises from DNA. It is a backwards view that claims reality is subject to awareness or to a physical adaptation meant to sense it, rather than vice versa.
Humans have a reliable way of experiencing some kinds of things: Heat, light, taste, sound, viscosity, gravity, density, hardness, etc., etc. These sensations form the basis of science as well as the natural law philosophies of the empiricists.
The fact that individuals may experience the "sensations" of morality differently from one another can not logically invalidate any absolute attributes that morality might encompass. If external senses arose from primitive ancestors, this does not mean that the nature of heat has changed. Likewise, if moral senses arose from primitive ancestors, this does not mean that the nature of morality has changed or suddenly come into existence. If two individuals possess different notions of quantity, this doesn't mean that two plus two no longer equal four. There are definite laws that govern the physical and the abstract, regardless of how well our minds are designed to comprehend them.
The discipline of philosophy has always held that the metaphysical realm of logic is likewise governed by definite laws, and that from these laws are derived the realities of propriety, merit, and so forth.
I have hope that good scientists avoid the sort of dogmatic proselytizing represented in this NYTimes article. I will venture to say that morality will never be subject to the empirical sort of testing that science demands, and that scientists therefore have nothing to say about it (as scientists). At best, the scientist might claim that animals seem to have a sort of moral sense which is nicely facilitated by the wonders of genetics, and leave it at that. Science can't give us the value of such a statement. That belongs to philosophy.
I have been considering similar questions lately.
Here's a question: can a person become convinced to become and then become more moral based on their life experience? If so, where do genetics fit in that case?
Hardly! Derived morality from survival isn't Nietzschian, it's societal. Frankly, me and my family and friends working together will crush you regardless how strong you are. Help each other and spread our genes faster than any greedy fool with boots on the throat of others. The rules aren't hard to hash out.
Help others.
Help yourself.
Help a group that helps you.
Help another who helps you.
Have sex. (lust)
Have sex with pretty people.
Protect your children. (love)
Protect those in your group. (love)
Protect children.
Hurt those who hurt you. (revenge)
Don't do things which would make you feel bad if they were done to you.
Don't do things which make you feel bad. (empathy)
Work with the group, do as they do.
Believe what you are told.
Protect others.
Share with the group.
Ask for help.
Dislike outsiders.
Really, these moral instructions are fairly easy to evolve. The group which possesses them is more fit than the series of individuals which doesn't. Some of them tend to misfire and don't work as well as they might have in the past. Doing what the group does is a great way to learn, it's also a great way to do horrific and sinister wrong to non-group individuals. And, in fact, when engaging in immoral acts, it is best to exclude the non-group completely to get around the brain's build in moral compass. That way they have no moral group worth to you.
Really we see this group activity rather regularly in the wild as well as in other primates. Chimps will go without food when getting food will give another chimp an electric shock. Even plants will release chemical signposts when attacked so that other plants will be more apt to protect themselves. Philosophy has been rather good at hashing out certain elements of this moral code, though they tend to miss some of the finer details. For example, utilitarianism works remarkably well... though you would be hard pressed to find any mother who would choose to let her child die over the children of five strangers.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Cannibalism is a blood libel that is used to slander other groups. You yourself do it in your comment, insinuating that non-"Christians" are somehow more prone to cannibalism. In fact, the "Christian" religion glorifies cannibalism (what do you think the bread and wine symbolize? mmm, delicious cannibalism), not to mention the fact that "Christians" killed and ate their enemies during the first crusade. Too bad your co-religionists forgot to delete that little incident from history when they were re-writing our history in the dark ages, hey?
Now, please continue preaching down to us, oh high and mighty "Christian". I find it highly amusing.
"For when Gentiles, who have no law, do by nature the things of the law, these, though they have no law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts [brain?], their conscience bearing witness with it and their reasonings, one with the other, accusing or even excusing them."
Comments?
Your entrails will become your extrails.. and... pain! lots and lots of pain!
OK, I have a question for you. To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I'm a generally theologically conservative Christian. I fully recognize that any given non-Christian (including atheists) can be--and often is--as nice, moral, etc. as any given Christian. (And, FYI, I hear other Christians saying that quite often. I know many Christians are prejudiced in this area, but many of us are just as concerned about correcting that error as you are.)
Can you explain for me what you mean when you say that you recognize right and wrong?
I'm not asking this as a challenge, as an attempt to debate you. I'm genuinely curious to know how it is you think about this.
I can understand you empathizing with victims of crimes. I can understand if you care about people, and don't want to see them hurt. I can understand you adhering to the golden rule. I can understand you approaching moral questions from that kind of subjective standpoint. It reduces to, "I like this" or "I don't like this," or to "I want to see this happen" or "I don't want to see this happen."
But I don't understand your grounds for ever saying that something is "wrong" or "right". I don't understand how you could say to any of those power-mad wackos, "What you did was wrong." If they don't empathize with their victims, if they don't care, what reason could you give them to explain why they shouldn't have done it? (Even if it's true that their actions hurt their genes' chances of surviving, what can you say to them if they just don't care?)
When you say, "That was wrong," what do you actually mean? Do you mean anything other than "I don't like that"?
That's my question. I also have a comment on what you said about whether atheism means we can all do what we want. I agree with you that simply being an atheist does not mean you won't care about morality. But that doesn't imply that atheists have consistent rational grounds for morality. That is, just because they care, doesn't mean they have a reason to. The biological or psychological mechanism may be present, but that doesn't tell us there's any principle in atheism on which moral principles can rest. You may believe in right and wrong, but that doesn't mean your belief is warranted.
The posted article seems to view morality as the social contract theorists did (specifically, Hobbes and Rousseau); that is, morality arose in as a natural response to the non-moral state of nature that moral agents existed in prior to forming the social contract. In this case, morality is the tool which moral agents employ to create a rules-based society (the social contract being the manifestation of the moral agreement between agents) from which civilization is able to rise. If one takes the view of the social contract theorists, then it certainly rings true: morality is simply agreed upon social norms and nothing more.
Unfortunately, ethical philosophy has moved on a fair bit since social contract theory was first in the vogue. Today there are roughly four camps or schools of moral thought (leaving aside the positivists and cultural relativists): the Utilitarians, the egoists, the deontologists (think Kantian morality), and the Virtue ethicists. All four camps view morality as the direct result of reason; for Kant, specifically, morality is binding on rational agents because they possess reason. This axiom is more or less accepted by the other camps of morality, with the only points of contention being the most reasonable way morality should be carried out.
Social Contract theory, however, completely dispenses with reason being the necessary prerequisite for morality. This is the essential problem with Social Contract theory; the original social contract arose not through the reasoning of a rational agent, but, rather, as almost an economic or historical inevitability. The continuance of the social contract, however, is argued to be the most rational course of action (lest we devolve into the state of nature) - reason is thus applied to morality after the fact. Which brings forth all sorts of problems. This view is not something that I agree with at all, and, indeed, I have not personally met a philosopher that believes morality arose separately from reason.
If this biologist can prove that reason arose through evolutionary means, then he might have something. But all he has now is an antiquated view of moral philosophy stitched together with basic social rules and organisation in apes. Which is to say, nothing at all.
No. The basis of the free market is not that people are primarily motivated by self-interest, but rather that people are the fairest judgest of their own interest. I suggest you get a copy of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments, to see that the thoughts of the originator of free-market theory about people's primary motivation were pretty much the same as yours regarding the primary motivation of people.
Without God and religion in the west we're seeing people worship rap "artists", chavs, and Paris Hilton. I'd venture it's human nature to be predisposed to workship SOMETHING, and when it's not a person, it's money or a simple posession. I personally would much rather all these less independent people were worshipping an anthropomorphised (if impossible to live up to) concept than someone who sings about shooting people and smacking women, wouldn't you?
Yes, a few religious people are ultra-conservative and oppose change, but you know what? So are a few accountants, a few lawyers, a few programmers, a few journalists - a few people. If a holy book gives people a little comfort and some advice about how to live then I'd much rather they followed that than attempted to exercise 'free will' and act like complete animals - hedonists.
Disclaimer: Not religious, but posting AC because I suspect that fact may be irrelevant.
Your argument is a nonsequitor.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Jesus Christ said "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."
That means any person who wants to do the right thing, and asks the LORD for help, will be given alternatives, or strengthened in their resolve, or in some way allowed to choose a righteous path.
Jesus Christ said that to love the LORD with all your mind, all your strength, and all your will, is the most important thing you can do. Next to that is to love your neighbor as yourself. If you love your neighbor as yourself, then you would tell them both of those things.
The geneticists have been deceived, and, in being deceived, they have been saying things that would deceive others into adopting cold, calloused and deceitful worldviews. They have been publishing things that, if taken seriously, could result in someone following the primrose path to hell.
I wonder when the geneticists will take responsibility for that.
Even if they aren't directly responsible for people looking at themselves as evolved monkies, and even if they don't succeed in deceiving people into choosing paths that lead them to hell, they are still telling people things that, if taken to heart, could lead to a really crappy world.
That's a world that they must share with those they've deceived into believing themselves to be "genetically programmed robot-monkies without souls, or any afterlife / final judgement to justify moral behavior, believing such things to be false superstitions; a world of people living each day in persuit of food, shelter and sex, with no care of, or love for God, unless it can be explained in the shallowest of evolutionary terms."
In case there are any human behavioral geneticists reading, step back and some the perspective on that. Is that your ideal world?
Remember your own mother's love, as you were growing up. Could you honestly stand and look her in the face, telling her that it was nothing more than an genetically programmed behavior, the result of millions of years of biological evolution? If you have kids, are you satisfied to call them an extension of the same process? Think of your love for your wives and husbands. Can you honestly say that you believe evolution would lead to that?
Evolution might lead to aggressiveness among males to get access to the women, for reproduction, but they sure as hell wouldn't need to love them afterwards, or take the time to make a traditional home. It wouldn't explain why a person would miss their ex wife or ex girlfriend years after the fact.
Evolution might lead to a superstrain of women who choose their men only based on the car they drive, their money, their circumstances and their genes, but that wouldn't explain why they miss their husbands while they are off on business trips, and it wouldn't explain why poor women don't spend all their time looking for a replacement for their husbands, prepared to abandon their kids at a moment's notice, in order to raise a new crop with a better mate.
Evolution wouldn't explain why, of their own goodwill, one person would help another person, who's drowning, out of a well. It wouldn't explain why one person would dive into rough seas to rescue a total stranger at the risk of their own life. It wouldn't explain why a person would give to charity, to help complete strangers.
Evolution doesn't explain the thrill and exhileration of riding a motorcycle, or of the wind in your hair, or the enjoyment of warm sunlight on a cool day. It doesn't explain the sense of enjoyment from writing software, or horseback riding, or flying in an airplane. It doesn't explain the sense of satisfaction that comes from solving a riddle, or a puzzle.
Come to think of it, evolution doesn't explain much of anything, really, in terms of human behavior.
Don't let them steal your soul with such a narrow system of looking at the world. There is so much more to life, when you're not looking at the world as if it were a tribe of evolved apes, bashing each other over the heads with futuristic clubs.
The LORD gave you your very own soul. Keep it.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
"Your honor, I plead not guilty due to a biological problem that I have which makes me amoral. Society cannot expect me to live by morals because I am biologically challenged and it prevents me from following morals."
We already have a classification of this, it is called being a sociopath.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
And what an ill considered rant against religion *The God Delusion* is.
Dawkins should stick to writing about what he knows, because reading this makes it clear to me that he is somewhat out of his depth.
And his claim that sexual abuse often isn't as bad as bringing up a child in your religion is just being deliberately provocative.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
I'm not the person you were replying to, but I would like to take a moment reply to you.
There most certainly is a biological reason for morality.
We are evolutionarily predisposed to be moral creatures. Why? Because moral behaviour confers a net/net evolutionary advantage, even if said advantage is so indirect that you cannot recognize it consciously.
Our ancestors certainly didn't require quaint concepts like religion in order to have morals. Our very survival and evolution can handle that all on its own. Our ancestors needed quaint concepts like religion to explain frightening things like balls of fire transiting the sky above. It is in fact perfectly reasonable to suggest (and I personally believe this to be the case) that there once was a time (before science) when the very belief in religion conferred a net evolutionary advantage (to explain frightening unknown things).
It is interesting and worth noting that one might start down a path claiming that the existence and application of morals is dependent on religion, only to find that not only is the existence and application of morals quite happy coming into being and chugging along just fine based on evolution alone, but that even more interesting is the fact that religion itself most likely came into being (and survives to this day) because at one point in time it too conferred an evolutionary advantage.
Following from this, why are there more and more atheists as time passes in our civilization? Simple. Because belief in religion no longer confers a strong enough evolutionary advantage, and may even confer a weaker evolutionary advantage than, say, a strong belief in the scientific principle.
But would we lose our morals if we, as a civilization, lost our religion over time? Most certainly not, because, as already mentioned, a predisposition to possess and apply morals confers a strong evolutionary advantage.
My only comment to offer is to congratulate anyone who adds to these sciento-philosophical discussions in a mood of humility and teachability, willing to champion their own thoughts in an assertive yet modest way, and willing to hear the other without xenophobia. I hope that this state of philosophical peace of mind can be found by more people, especially here, as I believe that there is a profound A-Ha! to be found once relaxing one's need to be "absolutely right". There is much to be found in (honestly) imagining the alternate state. And it needn't cost you your own position - we all have to operate on *some* assumptions.
These are not exclusive, all are part of a rational self interest guided worldview.
I blame the notion that they are on those that would propagate a top down groupthink worldview.
Fairness is in my best interest.
Reciprocity is in my best interest.
Rational altruism is in my best interest.
Cooperation is in my best interest.
Etc.
Intelligent self interest doesnt mean me me me all for me.
Cooperation and Competition are equally valid survival strategies, and most organisms switch off as the situation dictates.
~!J!
most is arbitrary rules making up memes that helped a group of people survive.
Sexual Fidelity causes a lot of pain in some societies. In others- it doesn't cause a ripple. In others, they would consider a person in a one on one relationship unfortunate to be so limited.
Tons of animals cheat- a few don't. Those that don't have less genetic diversity and are easier to wipe out.
Some morality is based on genetics. I think most isn't.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
While I'm sure there are some "universal principles" that all sentient beings could hopefully agree upon as objectively moral, there's no doubt that genetics and evolution shape some of our moral behaviors. Consider for example an alien intelligent species who evolved from primative ancestors whose females were only in heat one day a year. In such a circumstance, it's imperatie for males to breed during this time for the species to survive. The males body is flooded with an overwhelming drive to breed the fertile females. Now there may be many ways this situation can be handled intelligently, but one can easily imagine a society which evolved where rape was allowed on those days as a biological imperative. In their morality, rape under such circumstances is justified; in ours, while we may sympathize with their situation, we might conclude that one alien male forcing itself on an unwilling alien female was still immoral, even in desperate circumstances.
Isn't this kind of a nonsensical question once one considers the source of philosophy? Consider the question "Philosophy - Biological or... Invisible Pink Unicornian?" I am of the opinion that there is no real way for human behavior to step out of the biological realm without invoking a nonphysical element of some sort. In other words, even if morality does come from philosophy, philosophy comes from biology, which in turn means morality comes from biology.
I don't think it's genetic. I've just finished reading a fascinating book by Humberto Maturana and Franscisco Varela, "Autopeoisis and Cognition". They spend a lot of the book discussion consciousness and how it arises.
They argue that organisms begin from a position of perceiving changes in their environment only. Each successive level of complexity gives rise to emergent features. When their nervous system has increased in complexity to the point where it can hold one description of their environment and compare it with another description ( which requires adding a layer of recursion ), this is the emergence of consciousness. Next, when they can describe themselves, which requires another layer of recursion, they become self-conscious. The next level of recursion is when they can hold a description of themselves against a description of another organism, and they develop Theory of Mind .
Now, one of the consequences of the development Theory of Mind is an intellectual empathy, an understanding that others are fundamentally the same as we ourselves are. This is the basis of morality. The domain of the mind is not genetically or physically determined. The main determinant in the state of the mind is the mind itself - it's state is infinitely self-recursive, and while the brain, who's state IS largely determined by genetics is required to enable the mind, the brain does not specify the organisation of the mind. The mind carries out self-organisation.
You see a situation and then imagine what a "hero" would do in that situation.
You've merely deferred the question, since we conclude what a "hero" would do only by reference to ourselves.
Without self-reference and awareness of self, we simply have no basis for determining what any sentient entity would do, real or imagined, in any situation. And the only process by which self-reference and awareness of self leads to choices is causality and our assessment of the merits of future states.
Bringing one's mother or any other hero into the question provides no additional insight, since clearly we do not possess a mental library of hero responses for all eventualities. The hero is not autonomous: it's just ourselves, temporarily placed into different shoes but still quite unavoidably answering all questions from an entirely personal perspective.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
http://www.engineers.auckland.ac.nz/~snor007/docs
Morality manifests everywhere because it is an aspect of nature.
What I find a little strange is that TFA is not clear about a distinction between morality and ethics and so ends up in a reason vrs. emotion dillema in the Kant vrs. Hume discussion. Morality always starts from the gut as all teachers have said. Ethics tries to sort out the various promptings of morality through reason that mimics the gut instincts. So, empathy is modeled with the abstraction of disinterstedness for example. Altruism might emerge as elightened self-interest in some schemes. It seems good to me that the philosphers are taking an interest because much of what I've read based on the biological approach is very unsophisticated in its appreciation of how morality is reshaped by ethics and thus seems to run into basic definitional problems.
Those things you mention which are valid are typically extrapolations of the previous. Art is quite often a creative process and according to Geoffrey Miller could easily have helped with sexual selection of mates; why that is a pretty picture... let's have sex. Cultivation is a technology, this develops on a different level. Our technology evolves but not as part of our genetic code, rather it develops as part of system of memes. Our ideas and creations evolve in this sense. We take a good idea and make it better. Primarily more than anything else, I would say this different evolving layer of memes is what makes us human. Unlike other apes, we have mirror neurons and can effectively do what we see. There is an old idiom, 'monkey see, monkey do', which is actually rather ironic because apes aren't very good at aping. Whereas humans can watch an activity out of the corner of our eyes and pick it up.
A nation as such is simply an extreme extrapolation of group.
These are simply derived from the rules, not rules themselves. Artistic pursuits might be hardwired. Meta-concerns and religion are probably misfiring of a general rule to believe that any perceived effect has a real natural cause. Which, after some convolutions shoves that real cause outside the reality of the natural world. We are talking about general moralistic rules hard-coded into our brains. Not the higher extrapolations like lets draw a picture and put forth a charter.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Atheism doesn't want the same morality as religion; it wants better morality.
it is pretty amazing to me that a guy riding a donkey comes off as much more sophisticated in human relationships then folks with 2000 years more history and all the technological advantages we've seen in that time.
morality isn't philosophy.
morality isn't biology.
morality *IS* practicality.
the donkey rider proclaimed a future world where peace, prosperity, joy and happiness would be the rule of the day. peace, prosperity, joy and happiness are effects that require a root cause.
that root cause is morality - and the donkey rider defined it as caring for others EQUAL to yourselves.
if humanity FAILS to do this, and they will with 100% certainty, humanity will eventually topple under the weight of the self inflicted ills of selfishness.
if you look over history, the concept that selfishness leads to pain for the community is every bit a law as the law of gravity.
this is the true message of the bible* that has been lost amongst the selfish people trying to use the bible for selfish reasons.
morality, caring for others EQUAL to ourselves, is the only practical cause for a peaceful, productive and happy eternity.
isn't this as obvious as 2+2=4?
even if you don't believe in eternity, are you going to argue this life wouldn't be better if folks cared for others EQUAL to themselves (should i rape here kill her family or should i respect her and her family and deal with my issues another way?) should i loot this company in a stock scam, or should i respect the stockholders and adjust my value system so i'm not so greedy and selfish? should i loot the public coffers and enslave middle america's grandchildren for life, or should i be responsible and act fiscally reasonable?)? i know, i know, it is pollyana... but that is why god tells us to love him - he's the source of the value system that turns pollyana into reality.
one person at a time.
raise up your perspective a bit... the danger facing humanity is as grave as ever. one day, almost all nations will possess nuclear power... and the day that gas becomes extremely expensive and the greed of the nations will have to decide to kill and control others so they can remain mobile is creeping up on us one day at a time. it may be a while, i'm not trying to be alarmist, but it is coming.
While I respect your points...
Why would a person consider suicide at a loss of face? Why would someone give up all sexuality and wealth in order to commune with the divine? Are these things moral? Can they be explained by biology?
It is fine and good to reference morality in terms which seemingly benefit others (noting that it is impossible to understand why an animal is acting in a particular fashion. If your morality is ends oriented, this is fine. If not, you've given examples of something perhaps acting compassionately, not morally), but in my mind's eye this is akin to claiming (per your examples) a ventilator or a smoke detector moral.
Granted, a goodish portion of morality today seems defined by getting a desired outcome, and justifying the means. And reek of amoralness.
There are philosophical systems in which the actor my act against the will/benefit of society and still be considered moral. Soft fuzzy feelings or that knot in your stomach don't enter the equation at all.
Per my own ill-defined sense of right and wrong, most moral decisions are necessarily high-level cognitive acts of choosing. If there is no ability to choose, you lack the capacity to act immorally or morally. If you fail to consider your choice, you are acting as an automaton and have relinquished your opportunity to see where your morals really lie.
no comment.
"We" ?
Well, let's see, there's a group of "scientists" who have been consistently working under the [irrational] assumption that all human behavior can and must be explained in evolutionary terms.
Looking at the world fully convinced of their worldview, their lense, comes at the expense of faith in God, human love and compassion, altruism, faith in your fellow man, brotherhood and genuine goodwill.
What it gives in return is a smug, cynical and bitter sense of understanding, and that made even colder by the absense of faith in God, in genuine love and in human goodwill, etc.
Whose conclusion is hasty? I've seen it with my own eyes, and with my own mind. I once believed in it all: Evolution, genetic explanations for all human behavior, etc.
It is only demons, and then ultimately the LORD, that managed to break me away from the hubris of placing [almost] absolute faith into human behavioral genetics.
Faith must be given to the LORD; the other stuff is just a sideshow, and sometimes it is there for little reason other than to distract people from the truth.
I certainly don't blame you for not knowing, or for not being sure ["judge not, that ye not be judged"], but I am telling you that, without a doubt, the geneticists belief is dead wrong, and that it comes at a high price.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
""" ... the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes. """ :D ie: Are apes exhibiting "the roots of morality" because all creatures are capable of sensing the elusive moral imperative that we claim to sense and respond to? Humans aren't so immensely special?
Another delightful logical possibility is that apes are "being raised up by Ghod" to take over after we flush ourselves down the evolutionary toilet.
The point? Proving that we have a bio-mechanical capacity to do something does little to affect adhesive theories of metaphysics - metaphysics being the "slippery pig" within the field of intellectual pursuits.
Thus spoken as a true person of any religion....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
In the 70s, researchers visiting aborigines surprised them with a mirror. They had never seen their own reflection before. Their individual reactions were consistent: their jaws dropped, followed by covering their open mouths with their hand. (They speculated that the aborigines felt that their spirit came out of their bodies through their mouths.)
The Westerners also showed them the use of cameras attempting to see what style of photography they'd develop on their own. Without much intervention, they all learned how to use the cameras to take jaded landscape pictures and common cheesy poses.
If reacting to your own reflection is self-awareness, maybe such self-awareness is a regression.
Since believers are obviously not more moral in their actions, we can safely infer that grounding morality in God|The Bible|religion has no actual impact on human conduct. Yes, I'm sure it feels great to have that rhetorical trump card of "God said so!" but my main concern is human conduct, not so much the epistemological framework.
I realize that believers often believe that not believing in God would undermine morality, but think for a minute what that's saying. Are you saying that the only reason you don't go out tonight and rape you a nine year old is because you believe in God? If your faith in God was shaken, would you suddenly go on a murder spree? If the only reason you can think of to be moral is that you believe in God and an afterlife, then that says something about your character. But I doubt you're really like that. We may not be able to nail down the epistemology, but we all (homicidal wackos/sociopaths aside) share some common ground when it comes to recognizing morality.
Some are dogmatic about it (asserting there is no God), and some consider themselves agnostic (maybe we can never know?) and some just find the idea about as compelling and sensible as a Southern Baptist preacher finds the Upanishads. Like the old saw goes, if atheism is a religion, then baldness is a hair color.
captcha: republic
Wow. An entire cleverly written logical argument about the improbability of God and you concentrate on a single, out of context, peripheral argument.
I don't need to guess what brand of theist you are.
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Hm. You bring up a good question. Is atheism a religion?
Religion:
"A system of beliefs, including belief in the existence of at least one of the following: a human soul or spirit, a deity or higher being, or self after the death of one's body." (from Wiktionary)
"A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs." (from dictionary.com)
Atheism only loosely fits the latter definition, and only in the first and second clauses (cause and nature, but not purpose). It doesn't actually follow the former, as it doesn't include belife in a soul, a spirit, a deity, a higher being, or an afterlife.
Taking the term 'religion' down to 'a system of beliefs' - as you appear to have - includes a plethora of other concepts as religions, from public policy to design best-practices. I somehow doubt that such a mangling of definitions to fit in atheism is appropriate. Though, given a form to fill out, I suppose it's easiest to fill in 'atheist' in the religion slot. Or 'none'. I like 'none'.
By the by, you'll find that every atheist has a different system of beliefs associated with their attitude towards life, the only commonality being the conclusion that a god or pantheon of gods is an extremely unlikely concept, and at the very least, one that is intellectually unsatisfying (ie: Why's the sky blue? God made it that way.) This is distinct, at least, from organized religions where there is a good number of beliefs common to the followers thereof.
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Hey, I think you missed the point. The guy was ranting about how stupid and amoral the nation has become. The inclusion of religion just reflects that he's a Christian of some flavor, but otherwise it's a pretty irrelevant part of the post.
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Um.
Read through a few chapters of the Bible. I think you'll find the term 'Biblical Principles' is a contradiction by its very nature.
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Well, all Good Christian morality.
Then there's the much more prevalent (or at least more visible) Bad Christian morality, the sort that allows for abortion clinic bombings and poorly thought out bloodbaths on terrar.
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The behavior of simple organisms is determined purely by their genes. What's good for the survival of the individual is, by definition, good for the survival of the genes.
Once they develop to the point where they can acquire complex behaviors passed on as memes rather than genes it opens up the possibility for the development of selfish behavior memes which are deterimental to the survival of the group as a whole and of its genes. In these circumstances there must evolve a mechanism which would let a group keep such behavior in check - a social instinct. Species that evolve such an instinct have an survival advantage over those that don't.
It's pretty obvious. Why is this considered news?
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Why is morality a universal set of binding principles? You make it sound as if everyone gets a morality injection when they are born, and the few who don't become the misfits. Ultimately, morality is an intense personal trajectory through the wilderness and finally to some vague understanding , as to why or why not you have acted in a certain way.
Jack V All the IT vacancies in one place
The creation of a self-aware entity involves the formation of an ego which observes the universe rather than being an integral part of it. Our responsibility for this separation from the universe inculcates in us an overwhelming guilt which is attenuated by re-integration with the universe through consciousness.
The above scenario you post will only result in B generally refusing is when the society has B thinking "some of that money is mine" and then equating that to "all that money is mine".
Commercialism and capitalism makes this practically enshrined: you will do anything to get more money than someone else. Status power and prestige all depend on your cash reserves. Therefore if someon else gets more of that money, they will "beat" you and win more prestige etc than you.
me? I'd look at it as "hey, someone gave me a hundred quid" if A took 99.9% of the cash. If A said "fifty-fifty" I'd thank them. In either case, I'd thank you.
Morality is a system for co-operation that works. In the same way that we have a "rule of thumb" set of built-in functionality for tracing the trajectories of objects thrown through the air, we have a built-in "rule of thumb" morality which allows us to get on well together (supplemented by a load of cultural finessing). So the morality we live by most of the time is a direct product of our biological and cultural heritage. But in the same way that parabolic curves do not come from our instincts on thrown objects, so morality does not come from our instincts - it comes from the reality (based on logic, maths philosophy, etc.) that co-operation is an effective strategy.
Survival of the fittest.
Two (oversimplified) aspects.
surviving within the species.
the species itself surviving.
There's poor odds in being the best of an extinct species.
The capacity and mechanisms exist,but
need society(with precomposed rules) to functions.A man isn't a man by himself.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
Morality is on the OS level while capacity/ability is on the hardware level.
Different cultures install their own flavors of OS.
You cannot rule out evolution entirely when explaining behavior. Behavior *is* partially due to environmental influences, but it *is* also due to genetics (hence evolution). The question is to what degree each of these processes are involved.
Not necessarily. It does not *have* to be that way. Doing so would just be one interpretation/implication of how to live based on the evidence.
I am sorry, but I and many others feel there is just not enough evidence to rationally say this.
Allow me to suggest some very interesting reading material. There is a Christian professor I know who has given the evolution/ID thing a fair trial, and he has put together some articles which you can read here: http://www.letu.edu/opencms/opencms/_Academics/Ar
in the end, morality is really about long-term self interest.
Monkeys that don't spend their time killing each other, eating each other's flesh, and waging civil war have a greater chance of genetic survival? No wai!
One of the reasons language is so useful is that everyone has the same understanding of words. While those may be your definitions of "morality" and "ethics", they are not the dictionary's definitions; they are not common definitions; and they are not useful.
"Morality: a system of beliefs based in individual motivation that dictate behaviors towards others and self. It is immoral to let bad deeds go unpunished. Ethics: a system of beliefs based in group motivation that dictate the behaviors that would make the group run as smoothly as possible. It is unethical to sell term papers on the internet." - http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=461562
While i was being brief, what i said is based on what i read about Aristotle's, but if he isnt in the dictionary, or common, then i guess hes not useful.
This is akin to saying "Bob Dylan is only associated with music if you like Bob Dylan". Again we're dealing with actual definitions of words here, not your definitions of words.
Strawman argument... its not what i said at all, lrn2read.
If a person has no knowledge of any religion, is it possible for him to understand morality, or be moral ?
I think you can.
Understood that individualism and nihilsm have different definitions. However, looking at the three different answer sets to ethics (one universal set of principles, multiple possible sets of principles, no such thing as good and evil) it is easy to see that individualism pretty much reduces to nihilism. If morality can be determined by whim or by individual, then there is no accountability for ethics. If everyone can run around saying "based on my own personal ethical code, this action is justified," if becomes unfalsifiable but more so meaningless. Thus, it essentially reduces to no ethics.
Nope. It has to be universally binding. That doesn't mean that you have to go along with it, but if the principles are not universally binding, you fall into relativism. The main problem with relativism is that you never know how to cut the pie. Are ethics culturally relativistic? If so, then what defines a culture? Maybe they are family relativistic. Ultimately, some will see enough difference in individuals to reduce it to individualism. You may not think that sounds like a bad idea, but individualism leads to nihilism. This is because, in individualism, there is no way to confirm or validate the good or evil in an action. If the individual who acted says it was just, you have to take it at face value. By doing this, we are essentially stuck between ethical skepticism or nihilism. Either you can never know if someone acted justly, or there is just no such thing as just actions. So that's pretty much what forces it to be universally binding. In Mill's "Utilitarianism" you can see some of more detailed rationality behind it.
OK, Cue the Ayn Rand references.
Selfishness is good, and explain why.
Altruism is evil, and explain why.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
i agree completely with both the parent and replies, personally i am atheist, i do not idolize celebrities, i see no need to worship anything either celestial or terrestrial, i guess if most people are pre-disposed to worship something a good book full of wisom & philosophies towards moral living is better than worshipping the celebrities on TV & music video & radio...
if i was to adhere to any philosophy or religion it would be The Tao or Buddhism...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
slow news day ?
I'm not a scientist. I can't quote your physicists or your chemists or philosophers. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. I seem to be much of an outsider looking in. And much of this lofty exchange between seemingly educated, or at least researched, folks seems to be rather narrowly focused. It seems so many are digging for a complex system, a combination of chemicals, mathematics, and simply the roll of the cosmic dice as the basis of our existance. And our existance is defined, I believe, by what many of you are referring to as "morality." First off, the blatant stereotyping of certain groups of people on here seems counter to the proposed magnitude of understanding and enlightenment. The utter and total disregard for metaphysical realities based on the notion of mere empirical evidence or mathematical inconsistencies could possibly be a sign of limitations or shortcomings in the theoretical systems many of you are employeeing. But, with disregard to what is the basis of existence for one group of people produces disregard for those people and the ideas they bring to the table. The boys club has its rules. If you want to join; here are the rules. This is very much counter to the proposed open mindedness the majority of participants are aspiring to. Unfortunate. And, hypocritical. I am a Christian. I don't hold snakes, have visions, hear voices, or kill gay people. I see the same colors and hear the same sounds non-Christians see and hear. I have the same feelings, temptations, emotional struggles. And I have my doubts at times. I'm stunned by the same atrocities, touched by the same acts of selflessness, and left pondering about the same secrets the universe still holds. I merely have a different perspective with which I base everything. I'm not physically or emotionally or intellectually different than anybody else, believer or nonbeliever. And, I'm certainly not 'better' than anybody who has walked this earth, from the most addored to the most hated. But there are things I know for an absolute truth with which I would give everything before I denounced. And that alone, makes me very different. From the outside, or outside a basic Christian belief, proposing such absolutes and the knowledge thereof seems arrogant, uninformed, elitist, and fanatical. I believe many of you refer to me as a zealot. Fair enough. That's a product of the perspective with which you base your world view. But, that's not the reality of it. Its peace and deep responsibility. That is it. Its not a badge of honor or a sword to hold to anybodys throat. It gets me no rights to condemn another individual but gives me to responsibility to recognize things that are wrong and judge them as such. These things are morality. Human nature is selfish when left to its own devices. It is natural to want to protect the self and improve the experience of existence for the self. It wants to be better, have better things, feel better, etc. And without stucture that is established and above the individual, then such natural inclinations can be very destructive. As a created being, I'm subject to the Creator as an Authority. And from the Authority comes rules. Fortunately, in all of the imperfections and savagery that is the basic human existance, God provides perfection. His law is perfection. I must admit, as any honest Christian would, the motives by which one follows these rules and abides by the belief in God, more specifically, Christ, is no less selfish. I want a better existance for myself. I love God because he loves me and promises me things as a reward for faith alone. And, the alternative of being a cosmic accident hurtling through infinite space with absolutly no reason for being is much less attractive world view. I don't mean to oversimplify or treat such world views with sarcasm or disrespect. But that's what it boils down to for me. I don't see such naturalistic worldview working. I do see basic human nature working, based on the natural laws of the world. I see a replacement of the idea of God, because
I've read the theory that there is indeed a precursor to religion in ape behavior. This was in "The Naked Ape", a classic of evolutionary biology written in the sixties IIRC. It goes something like this:
Apes have a hierarchical social structure with an alpha-male at the top. Humans replicate this, of course, but remnants of that may also lead to us wanting to believe in a big alpha-male in the sky, ruling above all mortals.
You don't choose to be moral just because you think gods exist. And morality doesn't exist because gods might exist. You are simply 100 percent wrong, as in absolutely, for all time infinitum, everlasting...wrong. Your view is simply childish and narrowminded.
We instinctively sense that being "bad", or "destructive" might lead us in the short term to some rewards, but at the same time realize that our environment will suffer because of our actions. And if our environment suffers, then so eventually, will we. And that sense, combined with the stronger sense that being caught by our fellow society supporters, the constructive ones, will catch us, which will definitely reduce our possibility for the rewards that we know we are after. Sometimes doing the right thing, even though it is harder, leads to an exponential growth in the rewards, as opposed to the linear growth that being bad may bring.
Most of "morality" revolves around sex and the ability to reproduce, and leading a better life will most definitely lead to more sex!
In the end however it is much deeper and more compelling than that. Being completely materialistic about the universe at large and our place within it we must consider three things. First, that the universe is probably everlasting yet changes forms. Second that we "are" a configuration of whatever the universe is actually made of. And third, that we are really intelligent machines that can be created over and over again by the processes of the universe. If that is the case, then in some sense we have always existed, and always will exist, and that our knowledge of this time and place is just temporary. In that sense, morality becomes, anything you do bad or good to someone, you do to to yourself...eventually.
All morality is learned, period. Just like the Human Brain has specific hardware for vocal communication, but isn't born knowing how to speak, even if it has specific hardware for morality (which it probably does, see below) a baby isn't born knowing right from wrong.
Humans, however, are smart. And humans in a group will quickly learn that things just work better when there's a common framework of rules and boundaries. What those rules and boundaries are, of course, changes from group to group.
So, yes. Take a bunch of feral humans, throw them all together, and they'll develop morality and a social order. Doesn't mean it's inherent, just that given a certain set of circumstances, you'll generally get a certain result. To quote Data, just because wood can be set on fire doesn't mean that there is fire contained in wood. Well, just because humans will generally figure out that morality is good in group environments doesn't mean that morality is 'built in'.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
He's actually referring to the Moops
I dunno, I'm an atheist but I don't think Dawkins does us any favors. Much of what he writes about religion would be modded as "flamebait" on Slashdot, and rightly so. Luckily, it's possible to coexist with people with different beliefs from ours (otherwise we'd all be dead), but Dawkins seems to want to stamp them out by logical argument. He gives atheists a bad name.
In the final analysis, all Dawkins can logically argue is, as you say, "the improbability of God". And sure, God is hella improbable, duh. But anyone religious doesn't believe in their god for statistical or logical reasons, so Dawkins' argument is entirely irrelevant to them. Dawkins implies that this somehow isn't the case. Where Dawkins' argument is "cleverly written" is in being able to snow so many smart atheists into blindly saying "yeah!", where all he's done is belabored the obvious and not advanced any real debate on the subject at all. He should stick to analysing his sociobiological tautologies ("if it survived, it's good at surviving").
Personally, I'd say that -- from a Christian perspective -- the existence of depression contradicts the existence of a loving, forgiving God. From a saner, atheistic perspective, the existence of depression is just a sign that our society needs better mental health programs, and that our culture needs to prevent people from becoming alienated and isolated.
I don't know. It's too complex. We have the instinct to help ourselves to a lot of money. Then we have the instinct to keep our hands to ourselves (for the good of society).
So when I am choosing between the instinct to rob the bank and the instinct to NOT rob the bank, what is it that tells me that I should not rob the bank?
You make it sound as though you believe that it's some sort of instinct that tells us not to rob the bank, based on some sort of programming in the brain. But you imply in the same paragraph that we have a competing instinct to help ourselves to some cash. This give us 2 instincts, but there is a 3rd instinct that tells us which we ought to choose.
I'm wondering if you believe there are 3 instincts at work here: the one that makes us want money, the one that makes me want to go without for the good of society, and the one that makes me decide that it's wrong to steal. Or do you believe that there is only one instinct, and that is the one that makes us want to NOT rob the bank? It just seems to me that your idea of why people don't rob banks (yet banks employ a remarkable amount of security to ensure that they aren't robbed (and people do it anyway)) is too simple.
I'm using the word 'instinct' in my post even though I don't think you used it in yours. If you were thinking of a different word or concept, let me know.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
It is a reference to a philosophical argument / debate surrounding the relationship between body and soul.
Long ago, philosophers began asking how it could be that body and soul are linked, and how could it be that consciousness rises out of matter, or how it could be that something immaterial ("soul") could dictate, or drive, the actions of a material body.
If memory serves, I've heard that debate framed as the "ghost in the machine", since there's a seeming disjunction between a 100% immaterial spirit and a 100% physical body.
If I understand his reference correctly, then, the "divine being in the machine" alludes to the possibility that the "spirit"/"soul" is built into the matter, rather than being apart from it, thereby accounting for such things as free will by saying "built into the matter [i.e. the DNA of our bodies] is the determining essense [the human spirit, (calling it divine is blasphemous, though)] of the matter.
If, however, there is anything spiritual about matter, then it must be examined from a new perspective entirely. Spirit is not to be dominated by humans, and those who say they can dominate living human behavior with Genetics are saying they can dominate the human spirit, if the above assumption is granted.
There are philosophical problems with the assumption, as well. Specifically, there is a philosophical hypothesis called "epiphenominalism", which stipulates that consciousness arises out of matter (in much the same way a movie is projected onto a screen), and a locus of awareness is generated by something in matter itself. It's a clever solution, but I challenge any person to explain how that would actually happen.
Indeed, if it were ever discovered, they would have at least part of a genuine solution for building artificial life (ai computers, etc). I say part of a solution, since the locus of awareness does not mean that the creature would have free will, or that it would DO or THINK anything. Those would also have to be made for the artificial creature.
Would artificial life, then, have a soul, though? Would that locus of awareness be enough to call the entity "alive, spirited and soulful"? I think it would take more.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
In the grand world of debate, there is a thing called presumption. Presumption does not go to a view that should have to be first proven and well-established.
For example, Sigmund Freud allegedly tried to explain some of human behavior in terms of people having a suppresed sexual attraction for their parents. That was an irrational explanation for human behavior. Presumption should never have been granted to Freud's hypothesis. If someone followed you around all day, trying to tell you that you were a MotherF*cker, or saying that you wished you were, but that you suppressed it all day long, I think you'd start to understand just how wrong, and how irrational, Freud's argument really was.
Yet here we have a bunch of geneticists who are basically trying to do the same exact thing, under a different brand name. This time, they're apparently presuming to explain all of human behavior, humans, God's own creation, in strictly genetic and evolutionary terms. The logical conclusions of their positions are just as irrational, just as wrong, and just as offensive, as Freud's own.
One of the 10 Commandments states that we are not to worship any God other than the LORD. I don't worship genetic codes, and, with God's help, they do not, and will not dictate my thoughts, my faith, my actions... I have God-given free will.
"Ask, and ye shall receive."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Not to be cynical, but perhaps he could also have meant that maybe man has invented God - that it's all just psychological? Not advocating it either way myself, just pointing that out.
Neurological basis? Pattern recognition and association, IMO, are the basis of consciousness. Thinking involves associations (and I think could be reduced largely to that), and what we think about and how we think about things things [seems to me to] involves pattern recognition. I'm convinced (though on an anecdotal basis) that all behavior can be explained in this manner. And neurological makeups have basis in both genetics and environmental influence. Chemicals play a large part in the scheme of things as well.
Depends on what a soul is, whether they actually exist, and whether they actually have anything to do with behavior.I think the abolition of slavery is a real moral advance. However, I think it comes from the idea that Confucius recognized when he said, "Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you."
As for rape, I am surprised that you included it in your list. I'm not calling you a liar when I question your inclusion of rape, I just find it hard to believe that rape was wholly accepted in ancient Rome, and would be interested to learn more about this. I get everything I know about the criminality of rape in Rome from The Rape of Lucrece, so I'm not an expert.
Anyway, I don't think your case is as strong as you make it to be. I think public execution is explained by a change in ideas about what works, and the abolition of slavery was an advance on pre-existing morality.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Actually I can say it with certainty, and the faith of those scientists is not a delimiting benchmark of my own.
Actually, I can rule it out. I'm surprised to hear you say it's a matter of "what degree you think each of the influences is involved", since you really can't grant any genetic explanation of human behavior without granting all genetic explanation of human behavior, and that means you don't believe in free will. But if you don't believe in free will, then you have no moral justification for anything at all, since morality itself has no meaning in a world bereft of free will.
If someone were to go around killing your friends and family, then, you couldn't even tell them why they should stop doing it. You couldn't even tell them they could stop doing it.
Here, I just wrote this for the other guy, but it applies to you as well:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227549&cid=18
I've met many Phd's that I've disagreed with, and I've held my own against them. I don't need to scavenge their works for explanations as to why I don't have free will. On the other hand, I recommend that you try prayer. Start by asking for free will. You will not be disappointed.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Again, you can, but other people cannot based on what you have said without references/sources.
And again, I did not say that behavior is due exclusively to those two influences. I was advocating that those things are at least part of what is involved.And again,
your statement there is only an interpretation. Behaviorism does not have to be mutually exclusive with free will. You could, for instance, define free will as behavior which is localized to the individual which the individual determines to partake in for whatever reason(s).According to Google, free will is defined as "freedom of self determination and action independent of external causes."
Suppose I am a happy person, but then one day someone kills my kid, and I soon become an angry, bitter person. Am I choosing to be angry and bitter (behavior) without any external influence? Absolutely not. I would not become that way if someone did not kill my kid. And if the event had transpired later in time I would also have become angry later in time - so in this case my behavior is dependent on an event.
Now can you describe a single hypothetical situation where a person would make a choice that actually is "free of self determination and action independent of external causes" - based on absolutely no external influence (i.e. environmental influences, genetics, a person's needs/well-being)?
. I cannot (if you can, then please do). Your well-being (state of human existence in which a person's basic needs are adequately met and satisfied), for instance, is _always_ dependent on external influence.I think the whole notion of free will is extremely evasive.
Sorry, I missed this but wish to comment.
You could in most cases, but in some cases studies have indeed shown that you can not - or it is very, very difficult to convince the person. It would be hard, for instance, to convince a psychopath to have regard for others and a sense of moral obligation. This is rationally undeniable - there are recorded cases of such things.
So are you saying that a person who becomes so enraged due to hideous life circumstances and harms others is 100% at fault for their actions? How so - did they cause themselves to become that way? What about a woman who is a lesbian? Lesbians are often lesbians because a in their male abused them (I do not have a good reference for that, but that is what I heard in my (Christian) ethics class today). Are they to blame? Would they have decided to become a lesbian if they were not abused? And how about Hitler's Children - did they choose with their "free will" to act in their aggressive manners? Or, was their behavior a result of external influences? And are Germans more likely to be aggressive because of genetic descent? Would they have elected to act in those ways had they not had external influences acting on them? Perhaps some but certainly not all.
Before we go any further we should try to find common ground. (In light of what I rote in the previous paragraph) please define the term "free will."
The Biology of Morality
Music: a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality. Musicality: a perceived aspect of speech.
Where you put your willingness to find THE truth above and beyond your DESIRE to confirm WHAT YOU HOPE is the truth, the rigour of your effort survives, in spite of new discoveries, new perspectives, unbiased intellectual integrity shines untarnished.
On the other hand, if you make the conclusions you WISH to find more important than being diligant about finding them, I believe it is highly unlikely that your arguments will stand the test of time and honest reasoning.
The error in the way you have approached the question is here: you have made the assumption that matter precedes, and dictates, human behavior, human free will, and that human spirit is its subject. However, if you'll read some philosophy books, Kant or Descartes, for instance, you'll soon recognize that psychology got scooped by philosophy. The epistemic divide, as professor Johanna Seibt (of U.T. Austin) used to call it, is a well established breach in the capacity of any of the scientific / empirical fields of study to claim descriptive dominion over anything except a portion of the "phenomenal world".
What does that mean? The "phenomenal world"? Emanuel Kant broke existence down into these fundamental categories:
(1) What-precedes-the-senses (the noumenal), i.e. the presumed real-world-objects that are never directly experienced, but whose existence is strongly suggested by merit of our sensing them.
(2) Our sensory capacities, which gather stimui (presumably from what-precedes-the-senses).
(3) "Filters" that take raw, unfiltered sensory experience / input and strip it down, and present it to consciousness in meaningful, discernable, ostensified pieces.
(4) The assimilation of all everything in (3). (The result of that assimilation is what people experience. The "phenomenal" world. Post-filtered reality. You don't ever SEE a rock; you CAN'T ever see a rock; what you CAN see is the image of the rock "in your mind's eye". Whether there IS a rock can never be proven, since your human mind cannot detect a rock, it can only know about the image of the rock that the filters provided.)
(5) Reflection and processing of what is in (4).
Now, follow carefully. What looks like it might be a trivial hurdle, or an intellectual trick is actually something that has stymied the entire field of philosophy ever since the time of the ancient greeks, where Plato described his famous cave with light and shadows.
The conscious experience you know as daily life is, in fact, not EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD, it is EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. The world is not a thing that CAN be directly experienced. Smells, sights, sounds, senses, etc... ALL of it must be PRESENTED to the mind, which is then able to churn on the sum on them, assimilating them into a unified thing called consciousness, experience, awareness, what have you.
Since the physical world (the noumenal world) exists as nothing more than a persistant hypothesis, any field which makes reference to that world [as if it were real] AUTOMATICALLY makes a built-in assumption about what precedes the senses. Therefore, you see, there is a LEAP of FAITH built right into material empirical sciences.
Personally, I DO believe there is a physical ("noumenal") world, but an honest agnostic cannot ever get past the fact that the noumenal world can ONLY be assumed; it is not a certain fact.
So you see, now, starting from that position: Science [which postulates a material world that it presumes to test, study, hypothesize about, theorize about, measure, predict, analyze, etc] IS a faith, and BELIEF in science requires JUST AS MUCH FAITH as belief in GOD.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
A well reasoned argument does not get any stronger simply because the word "Socrates" is written afterwards; Nor does a completely foolish statement become any smarter if you sign it "Einstein".
The argument that genetics only accounts for PART of human behavior is even worse than the argument that it accounts for ALL human behavior. To make the assumption that it accounts for any behavior, any morality, any faith, AT ALL, already assumes that the human mind, soul, spirit, will, etc., is subject to obeying a genetic code, a material program. Once you've conceded that point, there really is no such thing as pick and choose. It's all or nothing. Either the "human robot" is "obeying" its genes or it isn't.
Yes, I know that it's theoretically possible, but, practically speaking, it isn't, and if you're willing to traverse the "unromantic" path of believing humans are genetic robots, all the way down to whether they behave morally, or believe in God, I'm not about to grant you the romantic assumption that there's still a holdout of even 1% free will... not unless you come up with some really good reasons to delineate between deterministic, and free-willed behavior.
That question expands the scope of the discussion beyond its original boundaries. We were discussing the role of genetics in morality, faith and free will. Whether "environmental influences" or "a person's needs / well-being" pertain to free will is totally outside the scope. The topic is genetics. If you believe genetics play ANY role in free will, then there are few, if any, arguments that justify saying it doesn't play an absolute role. And, in THAT case, if genetics played any role at all [in human behavior] then the genes would be telling the person how to react to the "environment, the needs and the well-being," etc.
If you really want an example, though, of environment not having any effect on human behavior, consider the case of Daniel, Shadrak, Mishak and Abednigo, who walked around in the hottest furnace in Babylon, and went unscorched because they were faithful to the LORD.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Here is what I mean when I say "free will":
Free will: Behavior chosen of one's own volition, motivation, or inclination; behavior that is not forced or coerced or in any way externally determined; behavior that is not deterministic [i.e. it could not be predicted by means of rule or formula, unless, of course, the "behaver" willingly CHOSE to live in accord with that rule or formula]; behavior that is freely chosen.
That definition should serve for the scope of this discussion; if it proves to be lacking, however, we could revise it.
I am certainly NOT saying that; For starters, Jesus said "judge not, that ye not be judged."
But what I was really saying was that if a person doesn't have free will then there's no sense in SAYING they are morally reprehensible for their actions. (unless, perhaps, they gave up their free will for the express purpose of making it easier to do morally reprehenisble things, or some other such strange exception)
Ok, I hate to use bold, but please remember this: Jesus said "judge not, that ye not be judged." AND "condemn not, that ye not be condemned."
But what I'm saying is that there is a final judgement for mankind, and it makes no sense to say the LORD would preside over mankind with a final judgement if mankind has no free will, since the LORD is kind, and just. I don't believe he would judge people for taking actions for which they had no choice. Genetic explanations of human behavior preclude free will. Therefore, the genetic explanations are false.
See the other post I made; it responded to that question.
See above; external influences are outside the scope of discussion; we're talking about genetics. People have tried to use genetics to explain how humans react to verious influences; how, and which circumstances, etc... What WOULD they have done here or there.. WHY did they do this or that? I really don't know.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
The Tao is a good set of thoughts, but I feel it concentrates too hard on how to deal with being in charge while not really dealing with being subordinate.
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It is quite unfortunate, anecdotal, and IMHO arrogant that you wish to turn your mind off to and not consider other peoples' ideas. You are going to be left in the dark as new things are discovered.
You are entitled think for your own self, but there are other people who have asked and do ask the very same questions you do and that have been and will be in the same place you are in. This view is very self-centered IMO and discrediting of others and their research/thinking efforts. Have you researched everything there is to research, or will you do so in your lifetime? Why reinvent the wheel - why not use what is available to you to solve problems / find answers? Some people are biased, but everyone is not.
Yes there is bad/poor science/research today, but not all science/research is done badly/poorly.
We can see from history that thinking for ourselves is a bad idea. Did not dictators like Hitler tend to think for themselves more rather than listening to and collaborating with others?
If you were a student in Bible school and were writing an exegesis paper on a passage from scripture, do you think you would get a good grade if you did not cite any sources except the Bible and your own self? Certainly not. You would at least cite commentaries, concordances, Bible encyclopedias, Bible Dictionaries, Wikipedia, the Internet, etc. If we did not collaborate and share ideas, research, and cite our sources we would not understand the Bible, for instance, as we do today.
Or maybe you just don't believe in these things. Maybe you believe we should just accept things and not research them further. But if we think along those lines we would still believe the world is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth, and that flies com out of meat rather than other flies laying their eggs on the meat. Or maybe you still believe these things? If not, then how is good, proper, and non-biased research bad? Does it objectively draw us away from God, or can it draw us away from God if done improperly and unfairly? Or maybe you think we should just think about things and not do research? If so, would everything then not be based on assumptions?
Any modern psychology book will provide evidence that advocate the possibility and liklihood that genetics play a part in behavior. For instance, most of these books will contain have information about twin studies. My book says the following:
And how about mentally handicapped individuals (e.g. people with down syndrome)? Their genetics certainly do not affect their behavior...
But books - except the Bible alone - and what other people think and say - especially those with PhD's - are pointless because we all just think for ourselves.Sorry to go on and on and on, but...
About this I've thought that maybe genes have an influence on our behavior (e.g. make us more or less sensitive and likely to respond to certain stimuli, at least partially), but genetics alone do not dictate our actions. I think that if a person is continually doing something wrong, for instance, they cannot change unless they a) have knowledge that the thing they are doing is wrong and b) have someone to facilitate their change. Now you could say that God reveals these things to the person, and that he is also the facilitator, and in my view that's fine. However think that how he does so (e.g. through nature, through a series of causational events, entirely supernaturally, at a quantum level, etc.) would be the matter of a different debate - and very likely one of the things we cannot know.
What are your thoughts?
Yes, I've studied psychology. I have seen those references before. And bravo, that's a very nice argument about what has been "found" in the PHENOMENAL world.
Jesus could heal a person with downs syndrome without speaking a single word. He healed the blind, healed lepers, raised the dead, walked on water, healed the lame, etc, etc. Prayer is answered. Faith can move mountains. Those studies do not account for spirit, for miracles, or for the LORD's intervention on our behalf. They don't explain the LORD's power, and they don't explain why my PRAYERS are answered.
Perhaps they should study THAT, instead.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I don't understand why you're saying that. I did consider your ideas. I even gave constructive criticism. In fact, where you brought up the statistics from the psychology textbook, I even lauded your example! Then I gave a pertinent response.
As for "turning off my mind", it isn't what I'm doing; not by a long shot. However, you're the one who was advocating "turning the mind off", or subscribing to groupthink, when you were talking about Hitler.
That is quite a condemnation. However, Jesus taught that we should not condemn one another, and he specifically said "Don't condemn, and you won't BE condemned."
Hmmm... I guess that means I must have condemned somebody, since you're condemning me. But, for your own sake, you're better off not condemning me, or anyone else, due to Jesus' teachings.
"Condemn not, that ye not be condemned."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
You were pointing out flaws in their methods and activities; I am doing so with yours. If you are going to do that to others then you should expect the same to be done to you.
That sounds pretty condemning (express strong disapproval of; demonstrate the guilt of) to me. And I never confirmed I was a Christian or subscribed to Jesus' teachings.
The point of my posting in the first place was not to criticize you; the purpose was to convey the shortsightedness that many Christians often convey toward alternate (not necessarily non-Christian) worldviews. Yes, I seem to have directed things at you, but I really I did not mean anything against you personally.
Look, I don't intend to be a jerk. Maybe you should read some of the comments I wrote a couple years ago here http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182360 &cid=15073606 and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135991&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=11356900#113569 44. At that time I simply did not consider others' views.
Please refer to my bit about the sun revolving around the earth, the earth being flat, etc. I did say this to be nasty. When those things were believed to be true alternate views actually were adamantly condemned - and the alternate views very often ended up being correct. The type of worldview you seem to convey seems to be advocating the condemnation of alternate views - and when that permeates the political arena and our schools and peoples' minds it is not a good thing because it creates confusion and inconsistent teachings. And those purporting those alternative views were often killed. If the church had not been so shortsighted, those people would have lived.
Yes, we are off track. Maybe we should just stop here. I think we've both pretty well said what we wanted to say; people can draw their own conclusions.
Alright, well I know this post was kind of pointless (and a few weeks to late), but I felt that our discussion was just left hanging and I didn't like it. Oh, and on the subject of the original slashdot post (humans hardwired to believe in supernatural deity), I would just like to leave my final thought on this matter: I believe that humans have been hardwired by God to believe in Him, both to make faith possible in more than just a spiritual "sense" and also to present additional physical evidence for His existence.