back to the beginning: morality

Yes, and you will keep repeating it until I acknowledge that this historical fact [and it certainly seems to be one] necessarily demonstrates that Communism is “inherently broken”.

And that, concommitantly, to the extent that others like the dude at Existential Comics argues that, “I bet you can’t name a single socialist country that successfully defended itself from being violently destroyed by the imperialist capitalist powers”, they have inherently miscontrued the true historical nature of the “capitalist juggernaut”.

No, it has nothing to do with that at all. It is all reflected in the objective fact that Communism is inherently flawed.

Whereas everyone knows that capitalism is inherently more virtuous.

Huh?

I believe that there is an abundance of empirical evidence to show that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the Stalin Era resulted in many deaths and much repression. I believe that historically this assumption is probably correct.

But to assume in turn that this necessarily demonstrates that Communism is inherently flawed/broken is basically to argue that only if others unequivocally share your own interpretation of these facts do they truly undertand Communism. The arguments of those who try to construe it all from another perspective we can safely assume are inherently flawed in turn.

And how is that not embedded largely in the manner in which your own particular “I” here is the embodiment of dasein? This is how you came to think about oblivion. Given the sequence of experiences that predisposed you to go in that direction. But others [living very different lives] think about it in conflicting ways. Is there a way in which all rational men and women ought to think about it?

And, again, my focus is always on connecting the dots between morality on this side of the grave and ones perceived fate on the other side of it. Many religious folks will argue that Communists will burn in Hell because the behaviors they choose here and now are derived from an atheistic point of view.

Over and again I note that with respect to issues like Communism and abortion, I deem the arguments made by both sides – by many sides – as reasonable given the initial set of assumptions they make about human interactions. I am tugged in both directions. I am no longer able to convince myself that one frame of mind is in fact more reasonable, more virtuous than the other.

That’s what it means to be down in the hole. At least out in the is/ought world. I’m just still largely perplexed regarding how this all unfolds inside your head when someone challenges your values relating to things like Communism and abortion. In some respects you seem willing to go in the direction of “you’re right from your side, I’m right from mine”, while in other respects you get around to things being “inherently flawed/broken”.

And as for the role that God and religion plays in all of this for you, I may as well be discussing the Real God with James Saint.

Okay, how about him insisting that there must be a wall built along the Mexican border. That this reflects the the most rational immigration policy.

Here are some arguments pro and con:

immigration.procon.org/view.ans … nID=000778

Now, my point is that both sides make arguments that are reasonable, given certain assumptions they start out with. I note these conflicting goods and am not able to construct the most reasonable argument of all. Both sides make points that the other side may or may not be able to deflect, but are not able to make entirely go away.

At the same time, I suggest that the values here embodied in any particular “I” are going to be as a result of the sequence of actual experiences they have had with this issue starting with the manner in which they were indoctrinated as children and then flowing out of the experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge they accumulated as more autonomous adults.

[-o< [-o< [-o< Preach it!

Sure, some will feel compelled to describe the manner in which I portray the components of my moral philosophy as “preaching”. As though I am linking them to some obligatory font that others must subscribe to in order to be deemed by me as being reasonable.

Whereas I am more interested in exploring the extent to which others can describe their own conflicted interactions with others in narratives that either reject my own components or indicate to me how the components of their own political prejudices allow them to feel less fractured and fragmented. Or not at all fractured and fragmented.

After all, here, what else is there?

From “Morality: The Final Delusion?” by Richard Garner in Philosophy Now magazine

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This is the existential juncture that I more or less root my own rendition of the “hole” I am in. No God and no moral narrative predicated on His existence. But if we explore the natural history of moral narratives in a No God world, we bump into any number of conflicting assumptions about any number of conflicting goods. Just as one must believe in the existence of God in order to subscribe to one or another Scripture, one must believe in the existence of morality in order to subscribe to one or another Humanism.

From my perspective, what we call morality is only the “for all practical purposes” necessity to prescribe and proscribe particular “rules of behaviors” in a particular community in order to sustain the least dysfunctional interactions.

And then down through the ages this would be predicated on one or another combination of right makes might, might makes right or democracy and the rule of law.

Only I myself can never construe even this assumption as anything other than just another existential contraption. I can’t demonstrate that there is no such thing as morality in a No God world anymore than I can demonstrate that God does not exist for those embedded in a religious community.

Instead, I can only come into places like this and note the arguments of others.

Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine

Albert Filice

It doesn’t necessarily follow that, if morality was objective, everyone would share the same value judgments. The far more important question is, “can morality be demonstrated to be objective such that it necessarily follows that all rational men and women are obligated to behave in such and such a way?”

Or be deemed irrational.

Which then just begs the question, “Is rational behavior the equivalent of moral behavior?”

Which seems to be the bottom line for folks like, say, Immanuel Kant and Ayn Rand.

And then the question of where God fits into all of this. For Kant, He would seem to be a vital transending font, for Rand, Reason itself would seem to be enough.

And then, finally, this part:

The “human all too human” complexities built into any one particular historical, cultural and interpersonal context.

The part I basically attribute to dasein. The part where “situational ethics” comes to revolve existentially around the interaction of identity, value judgments, conflicting goods, and the reality of political and economic power.

It is here however that I suggest we take “general description” “intellectual contraptions” like this “down to earth”.

If it was universally accepted that morality was objective it is still possible there could be differences over value judgements :

There may not be universal agreement on the source of the morality [ some might say God - some might say philosophy ]

There may not be universal agreement on which aspects of life would be subject to objective morality
You could not have your entire life subject to it because that would be an impossible ideal to live up to

However even if there was a single universal source for objective morality that absolutely everyone agreed upon there would still be free will
For free will is the enemy of objective morality because it gives human beings the freedom to reject their moral code whenever they want to

A psychologically weak individual would fail in their moral obligations more than a psychologically strong one even if they both shared the same moral code
This demonstrates personal character is every bit as important as a moral code if not more so when it comes to living a good life based on certain principles

Free will is also the reason why there will always be differences of opinion between said human beings on every subject known to them [ not just morality ]

Which is why specific claims that morality is objective given any particular context, or universal regarding all contexts, must be situated in a particular context such that whatever font chosen – God, science, reason, nature etc. – is put to the test.

In other words, with regard to the conflicting goods that do in fact pop up regarding so many human interactions.

After all, if there are differences in regard to value judgments and those value judgements do “for all practical purposes” come into conflict out in the world of actual human interactions, what then?

Eventually, in our modern world, rules of behaviors accepted among a group of people [for whatever reason] need to be reconfigured into laws [in the larger society] such that abiding by them or breaking them bring about various rewards and punishments.

And here there are either demonstrable goods and evils applicable to everyone [re God, reason, science, nature, etc.] or [in my view] individual men and women derive a particular subjective/subjunctive narrative from within extant historical, cultural and/or interpersonal sets of experiences, relationships and access to information and knowledge. Which, in turn, evolve over time given new experiences, relationships, ideas etc., in a world clearly awash in contingency, chance and change.

This, of course, becomes an entirely different context. No free will and morality is like everything else: enthrall to the laws of matter.

There is only the psychological illusion of being responsible for the behaviors we choose. There is only the psychological illusion of being able to hold others responsible for the behaviors that they choose.

Though even this is beyond my capacity to wholly demonstrate. Here we all make our own assumptions. In other words, in not being able to pin down beyond all doubt whether even those assumptions are not in turn compelled by nature.

This sort of thing [in my view] revolves less around being able to pin down behaviors demonstrated rationally and/or morally to be in sync with one or another objective font, and more around the part embedded in enforcement.

And here, yes, human psychology [in an autonomous world], does come into play. Some are just stronger, more assertive and more commanding than others. Similarly, there is the role played by social, political and economic power in any particular context. Being right is one thing, being able to enforce that right, another thing altogether.

Philosopher-kings, for example, the embodiment of right makes might in theory, may be woefully behind the eight-ball when it comes acquiring a police force, or an army or the political/economic wherewithal to command them.

Back again to the Pope and Hitler.

As an absolute concept objective morality is flawed because no human being can live up to such an ideal
The road to self improvement comes through trial and error and making mistakes and learning from them

It is therefore more effective as a bottom up philosophy than a top down one which is how religion usually operates
Although ultimately what matters is not the specific methodology but the willingness to actually want to self improve

Experience makes us better moral beings but mistakes are inevitable so must be accepted while trying to avoid them as much as possible

Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine

Jeanette Lang

What this confronts in my view is that [at times] considerably problematic juncture where “objectivity” understood technically by the serious philosopher meets its “ordinary language” counterpart out in a particular historical, culture and experiential context.

Or, perhaps, the serious philosophers can grapple with it in terms of human sensation and human perception and human conception intertwined in an assessment said to be in sync logically and epistemologically with rational thinking. And then, what, compare that to what actual flesh and blood folks out in a particular world justify as moral or immoral?

Is it in fact possible to transcend space and time existentially in order to establish, first, philosophically and then, secondly, to demonstrate that, for all practical purposes, human sacrifice is objectively immoral?

In other words, once modern men and women are able to be convinced that the Gods of nature [replaced by scientific knowledge] do not have to be appeased through human sacrifice, can they move on to, say, slaughtering the infidels that refuse to worship and adore their own one true denominational God?

Or are philosophers able to establish that at best God is just a name some give to the entirety of the universe itself. God as nature in sync with or not in sync with a teleology that gives meaning and purpose to existence?

Once, historically, it has been accepted by most that human sacrifice is not reasonable, is this the same as demonstrating that it is therefore immoral?

That, in other words, reasonable human beings are obligated to reject it?

A part of me is tugged in that directed, but a part of me is not.

There just does not seem to be a way in which to establish this as an essential truth applicable to all of us.

There is still that part of me that anchors value judgments of this sort in dasein and conflicting goods. Subjective/subjunctive frames of mind ineffably intertwined in contingency, chance and change; and in the possibility of determinism intertwined in all that we do not know about existence itself.

In any particular context, all human behaviors seem able to be rationalized by a particular “I” seeing the world in a way that my own particular “I” does not.

We reach the point where that which we are able to establish as true for all of us [in the either/or world], tumbles over into the parts where we cannot.

Okay, but that still leaves us with establishing “for all practical purposes” those behaviors deemed to be the most ideal for establishing in turn an improved self.

And then through both “trial and error” and “thinking it through” different people arrive at different moral narratives and political agendas. The “concept of morality” meets the “real world” embedded in what I construe to be conflicting goods derived from “I” as dasein interacting with others in a particular world where some have the actual power to enforce that which they deem to be in their own self-interest. Their self here [like mine and yours] no less an existential contraption embedded in an extant world historically, culturally and experientially.

That’s when I tap the serious philosophers on the shoulder and ask, “what then?”

But “what then?” only to the extent they are willing to intertwine their intellectual contraptions here out in a particular context where conflicting goods stubbornly prevail.

Thus when you suggest that…

…my reraction is often, “what on earth do you mean by this?”

In other words, what particular bottom involving what particular behaviors in which there are conflicting renditions of what “self-improvement” actually entails.

Who gets to decide which behaviors are the “mistakes”?

The philosophers?

The mistakes which you make have to be acknowledged by yourself because this is the only way you can actually learn
It is called self improvement because it is exclusively focused upon your own moral advancement and not anyone elses
You might seek guidance or support from others but the ultimate decision to want to improve is only one you can make

Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine

Karl Wray

This, in my view, is an entirely different way in which to approach morality as objective. Sure, it is an objective fact that individuals raised in different historical and cutural contexts, come to embody the value judgments embedded in their time and place. It’s not like – poof! – out of the blue an individual just makes up his or her own only wholly subjective morality.

But these objectivists were no less embedded in an extant historical, cultural and experiential context. Right? They clearly did not themselves just construct a wholly subjective moral narrative out of thin air “in their head”.

Instead, what connects them all is that they rooted their moral and political agendas in one or another transcending font. Thus the individual was expected to follow the leader because the leader was the embodiment of God or one or another rational/scientific political ideology.

What makes morality objective for those like him is the fact that it is never entirely subjective. It is instead always an intersubjective exchange of value judgments in any given community. A consensus is reached regarding the “rules of behavior”. This consensus can then revolve around either right makes might or democracy and the rule of law. Or, in some sets of circumstances, might makes right prevails.

And, besides, wealth and power will always be a factor when it comes to both making and then enforcing the rules.

Mistakes? Okay, but deemed to be mistakes by whom in what context regarding what behaviors that come into conflict in regard to conflicting assessments of what is said to in fact constitute “self-improvement”.

This part in other words:

And then through both “trial and error” and “thinking it through” different people arrive at different moral narratives and political agendas. The “concept of morality” meets the “real world” embedded in what I construe to be conflicting goods derived from “I” as dasein interacting with others in a particular world where some have the actual power to enforce that which they deem to be in their own self-interest. Their self here [like mine and yours] no less an existential contraption embedded in an extant world historically, culturally and experientially.

Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine

Allow me to rephrase this:

If we choose to live among others, we will need to establish rules of behavior. We will need to agree on what is right and what is wrong. We will need to enforce a set of rewards and punishments

Otherwise, either 1] the strong or 2] anarchy wil prevail.

Therefore morality is objective.

In a nutshell, right? If morality cannot be derived from God or from a rational consensus regarding the resolution of conflicting goods, then the fact that we all agree that something must be done when value judgments collide makes morality “for all practical purposes” objective.

But my own understanding of morality has never really focused the beam on knowing how one should behave in order to achieve a particular goal or objective. There are any number of actual facts that both sides can concur on regarding that. Instead, it revolves around what is deemed to be [and in fact are] the rational pursuits of goals and objectives that come into conflict.

What should I do if I am pregnant and don’t want to be?
What should I do if I believe that the unborn are human beings?

Well, there are in fact reasonable solutions available for those both sides. But the successful pursuit of one means curtailing the pursuits of the other.

What then is the stance of the moral objectivists here?

Rules of behaviour are encoded in law which applies to everyone equally while morality is entirely personal
The state can therefore make and impose law but not morality because that is a matter for each individual

“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in the latest issue of Philosophy Now magazine

This would seem to situate us at a rather mind-boggling intersection. One in which morality meets determinism. In other words, ethics concocted in the human brain is exposed to be no less autonomic than the heart pumping blood throughout the body or the kidneys passing waste out of the body through urine.

Or, to put it another way, it may not be so much whether AI can ever be the equivalent of human conscioiusness, but whether in creating it, it exposes to us just how much human consciousness itself is nature’s own equvalent of AI. Natural intelligence being no less mechanical.

How do “unconscious atoms” reconfigure into matter able to create a consciousness able to reconfigure into an “I” able to reveal to itself that consciousness itself is derived from unconscious atoms?

With God of course that becomes one possible explanation. If we are willing to set aside [for now] grasping how or why God Himself came into existence. And, in turn, the extent to which His existence is necessarily in sync with the laws of matter. Does God exists as a result of the laws of matter or did God first create the laws of matter in order to provide us with a context in which to interact?

Again, it seems possible that, the more sophisticated we become in creating an AI closer and closer to our own intelligence capabilities, the greater the possibility becomes that they really not distinguishable at all.

First of all, that is what I posted above in full.

But: my point in noting this is to suggest it is actually folks like John Talley who seem to approach objective morality in this manner. It is not something that I am suggesting.

It’s the secular rendition of those who insist that God must exist because without Him, there can be no font for an objective morality.

The last thing the preponderance of moral objectivists [sacred or secular] want to accept is the possibility there is no font – God, Reason, Nature etc. – from which the “real me” can derive “the right thing to do”.

This is a distinction without much of a difference for some. Whether rules of behaviors actually become laws depends on the extent to which behaviors derived from a personal morality begin to impinge on the behaviors that others wish to pursue instead.

And it is hardly a coincidence that personal moralities and societal laws tend to be in sync with particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts. That then evolve over time given a particular confluence of contingency, chance and change.

Nor that, in the end, what counts is having the actual power to enforce a particular set of behaviors through a particular set of rewards and punishments. Whether within a specific family or [through political economy] the community at large.

“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in Philosophy Now magazine

Pain and suffering.

How does one wrap their head around mindless matter evolving over billions of years into self-conscious mind-matter able to experience pain and suffering?

We can imagine how excruciating our own pain and suffering would be in any number of contexts that revolve around, say, “natural disasters”. But the mindless matter embedded in the tumultuous fury of the tornado or volcanic eruption or a raging fire itself presumably feel nothing at all.

And yet pain and suffering is often a critical factor when we approach that distinction between ethical and unethical behavior. The more of it we inflict on another the more likely it is to be seen as unethical.

But can we then create an artificial consciousness able to both feel pain and suffering and to approach the behaviors of other AI beings as either moral or immoral?

Again, assuming that in creating an AI “I”, we have some measure of autonomy and are in turn able to “manufacture” autonomy in this articial intelligence “I”.

Really, how close are we to dealing with these things in reality? A reality such as this for example:

How, in an autonomous universe, would the question of morality be the same or different for biological individuals and those individuals created by biological individuals to feel pain and suffering and to react to it as either justified or not justified?

“Artificial Consciousness: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge”
Paul Conrad Samuelsson in Philosophy Now magazine

Morality exploding in ever more mindboggling directions as new technologies beget brand new contexts in which to argue distinctions between right and wrong behaviors. Only now a flesh and blood “I” has to contend with an AI “I” that may or may not be in sync with any particular moral narrative and political agenda.

And then the equivalent of me down the road arguing the extent to which dasein, conflicting goods and political economy are in turn applicable to this AI “I”.

That ever expanding gap between the extraordinary acceleration of things that we know are true objectively for all of us in the either/or world, and the fact that going all the way back to the pre-Socratics, the is/ought world is still bursting at seams with subjective renditions of conflicting goods. Only now the technological bound has ushered in any number of brave new worlds to contend with.

In other words, one thing never changes: political economy. You can bet that those who own and operate the global economy [be they flesh and blood or homo deus] will make certain that whatever is deemed “theoretically” to be right and wrong in places like this, always comes down to the behaviors that they are empowered to enforce in order to sustain their own perceived best interests.

Question of the Month
“Is Morality Objective?”
From Philosophy Now magazine

Ronald W. Pies

The part that I keep coming around to. You can believe that morality is objective. You can claim to know that it’s objective. But how do you actually go about demonstrating that in fact it is given human interactions that come into conflict over behaviors said to be either right or wrong?

The “notional idea” of objective morality is one thing, but it’s not the thing that most interest me.

Exactly.

Instead, let’s focus in on human interactions in which any number of conflicting moral and political assessments crop up.

How about the role of government in our lives? Some value a considerably larger role than other. Depending on the issue.

Now, in regard to the “two central features of objectivity” above, everyone will agree that objectively the government does in fact exist.

But, using these two features, how is it determined objectively what the role of government ought to be in regard to, say, the legalization of marijuana use?

In a word: context. Construed subjectively from a point of view rooted in dasein.

Sure, if you insist that a consensus reached in any particular aggregation of human beings subsisting in any particular historical and culture and community context, need be as far as one goes in order to claim that morality is objective, then, for you, that makes it so.

You merely assert it to be true.

But then there’s the part that revolves around who gets to decide what this consensus shall be. The role that economic wealth and political power play.

And then the part where communities come into contact with other communities and the consensuses themselves come into conflict.

Thus the “notional idea” of objective morality falls apart at the seams when “for all practical purposes” there is no philosophical or scientific method for pinning them all down once and for all.