That's a very, very different point than your original post.

I mean if I say "You're an idiot", that's insulting. If I say "all people are idiots", it's just air.

It also makes "immoral" and "self-absorbed" completely useless words because they're no longer referring to degrees. Why not just say "we're all human" and reserve such strong words for special cases. I mean, that does not conflict with the bible. Even the bible clearly describes some people as worse than others and some better.

Because that diminishes the reality of humanity's condition. Not only is everyone self-absorbed and immoral, everyone is self-absorbed and immoral to a degree that is fever pitch. There is no degree between people in the context of Christian theology---we are all totally and irretrievably wicked. This is the major, resounding difference between Christian thinkers and humanist ones. Christians will admit this condition readily, while humanists claim they can have morality without God. I'll take the thinker who is self-effacing over his transposition any day.

I know you can't answer my questions about morality, so I guess we'll just leave it at that?

Again, that simply renders the words meaningless. Immoral denotes a deviation from accepted morals, and there is nothing in Christian theology that says this can't happen, nor is there any doubt it tells us that people can be good and decent. We might be all be sinners according to some doctrine of original sin, but like I said in the last post and which you decided to omit from your quote in this one: The bible certainly operates with degrees of morality in people.

Your question is not that difficult to answer in my opinion, but it was silly. This was a discussion on two words which you decided to use in a very peculiar way. Which you decided meant you should "humor me" and ask me where morality comes from. A bit like telling someone who is speaking about how to boil eggs to "humor me then, and tell me how the universe made chickens". It's not really pertinent to the matter at hand.

+1

I just thought it was a funny quote.

Did you see my post? If you don't want to have the conversation I'd appreciate it if you could say so, I love talking about moral philosophy so I'll pursue it unless I get a clear 'no thanks'..

My position is the universe seems to abide by certain less-than-flexible principles, which we can't easily circumvent (if at all).

This gives natural barriers for how a species can come to be and how it can act. Barring extreme medical conditions, we'll feel pain if we put hand on a stove - therefore it is generally seen as bad to put a person's hand on a hot stove. We also have traits that strongly determine our existence: We'll need nutrition, water and oxygen to live. We can extrapolate this all the way out to us being a social species. We depend on being reared as children to live, we depend on others to survive.

So from these principles not only do we emerge as a species, there emerges a set of behaviors that are very inflexible, related behaviors that are flexible and semi-related behaviors that are very flexible. This gives the foundation for morals.

As an example. It would be considered evil in pretty much any culture to not give a starving friend food if you had plenty to spare. It would in some cultures be seen as immoral not give a friend food if it only meant starving a bit yourself. In a few cultures it might be considered rude to not offer a friend food if you are making it. In some cultures it might be considered slightly rude to refuse offered food without a thanks.

So you have a few traits that are "hard-coded", so it becomes pretty much impossible for them to not become cultural norms. Some individuals might take exception or have sociopathic traits, but in this sense we're talking about cultural norms as the basis for morals. Or to put it in another way: We never select our norms completely individually. In this perspective the idea of the sociopath isn't a contradiction to this principle, it's actually evidence that it exists. If it didn't exist, we would not recognize the sociopath.

But we are thinking species so we go further than just behaviors that are hard-coded. But it is the same principles apply. Most morals can be boiled down "not good for you / not good for us / not good for society". In this region of moral norms we find the flexible ideas. "You must wear a tie to a wedding" etc.

Basically I see morals as emergent behavior. A result of a large body of interacting traits and mechanisms, but ultimately caused by a universe that (at least for now) seems behave in a specific way most of the time.

I'm not opposed to the idea of universal morals. This in the Kantian sense, in that there could feasibly be moral values that are "true" for humans. But I don't think you'll ever find a good way of determining them, so it's probably a dead end. I oppose extreme variants of moral relativism however. While we might not find out which moral values are true, I'm fairly convinced it is possible to determine which ones are false. Then again, I don't think that process is in any way or form easy, but ultimately I land on a form hedonism as the moral view that I most easily can defend.

You don't really understand what you're talking about, sorry.

It got asked of you twice in response to your post, from two different people, so it can't be that silly. It's much easier to call someone silly or stupid than answer that question. I know you can't answer it, because no one has ever satisfactorily answered it.

In other words, a meaningless product of biology----they don't really exist. That's fair, it's the only humanist option that is coherent. Unfortunately, there is something more deeply wrong about child rape and murder than 'it cuts out genes from the gene pool.'

Pointing out that "immoral" is a word that denotes a scale of judging human behavior shows that I don't understand what I'm talking about? Even the Bible (and you use Christian theology to defend your weird view) operates with terminology that shows us where a person is on some moral scale. So clearly it recognizes morality as something that can be weighed.

Nah, I don't really buy it. You threw a torch you have issues defending, so you find it easier to sit on the pedestal and claim everyone else are stupid plebs. Well, I'm sorry to say it - but it's down in this intellectual muck you so despise you'll find arguments that can be countered. And those are the only arguments worth making.

The rest of your post is just weird. I apparently won't answer your question, then you proceed to quote a single sentence from the answer I gave to Mightyboosh. Consistency shouldn't be that hard over two sentences.

Please provide direct quotations of this scale and degree of morality.

I never said you were stupid, I said you cannot defend humanistic 'morality' like you claimed. Even Nietzche did a poor job of it. I suspect with all this evasion that you know you can't defend it.

I've never found a good one. Naturalism is nihilism, any way you slice it. If you have a mucky argument that establishes moral truths without pulling yourself up by your own hair, go for it and stop the evasions.

That sentence is the crux of your answer: morality is an emergent property of biology, which is an emergent property of the universe. You didn't need 6 paragraphs to explain it; it's a common view. But in fact what you are saying is that morality in any real sense doesn't really exist; it's contingent on the biology and naturalism of the universe that gives rise to it. Similar to consciousness I suppose. It's a sneaky way of explaining away something we don't fully understand.

Sure, I missed that one. I gave a reply above.

So are you saying contingent things cannot exist? What about being "contingent on biology and naturalism of the universe that gives rise to it" means something "doesn't really exist"? Since it's similar, can you explain how consciousness doesn't really exist?

"That I disagree, but can't be bothered to have a good reason"

There's tons of moral and unhappy people out there.
Moral people die too.
Moral people suffer too.

Theist or atheist. Ned Flanders or Hunter S Thompson. All this talk about our collective and individual immorality; as if this is the be all and end all.

Happiness matters too.

Sometimes, the selfish choice is the right choice.

Do I look down on Hitchens for essentially drinking himself to death? Not in the slightest.

I don't really want to get into ethics 101 here but I'll bite for this one to elaborate.

Not at all. What I'm saying is if 'emergent properties' such as morality and consciousness are functions of base mechanisms then they don't exist a priori. If you take that position about morality and consciousness that is fine, it's a perfectly legitimate position to take. However, when someone taking that position claims something is 'right' or 'wrong' it leaves a little to be desired in terms of justification. If the conception of morality is just an emergent property of a naturalistic universe, then no, it doesn't really exist. It's merely an illusion or a subjective opinion of right and wrong. Similarly, consciousness doesn't really exist as anything other than a definable concept. It's just so many neurons firing in your brain at the same time you have the illusion of mind.

The problem is, raping and killing a child seems to be wrong inherently. Why is it though? If our conception of murder is just a function of our evolution, then in the long run heat death of the universe the murder of that child doesn't really mean anything, does it? We're all gonna be snuffed out eventually, sometimes violently or unfairly. Ted Bundys victims and everyone who remembered them and every memory of a memory will eventually disappear. In fact all life and light will be snuffed out in the end, so what does it matter? The fact is it doesn't. Not really. Unless morality exists a priori.

I have met some honest and consistent naturalists who claim morality is subjective, but the problem is the above. If morality is subjective, then why is Ted Bundy wrong and Mahatma Gandhi right? In that world, Ted Bundy is right for Ted Bundy and Mahatma Gandhi is right for Mahatma Gandhi. Murder is only wrong subjectively, and self-sacrifice is only right subjectively. In the end, we all disassemble into individual atoms across space time, and nothing matters. The conclusion is that naturalism is in fact nihilism. Morality doesn't exist. It's an illusion. This is uncomfortable, because morality does seem to exist a priori, which is the reason why atheists and naturalists have attempted, spectacularly unsuccessfully, for hundreds of years to justify this intuition.

I'm merely pointing out that anyone claiming to be both a naturalist and a moral person is a dog barking up two different trees.

Your conclusion about the dog barking up two different trees is not bad.

What is bad, is the above.

Does the fact that your favourite song ends make it any less enjoyable or meaningful?

You are arguing that on naturalistic grounds our lives don't matter. Okay. Tell me which of these claims are inconsistent with the others.

1) I'll die someday.
2) There is no afterlife.
3) My life matters to me.
4) If something matters to me, then it matters.
5) Therefore, my life matters.

Like most people, I don't want people to kill children. I think it is typically morally wrong to kill children. I don't think it is morally wrong to kill children just because I don't want people to do it, but because I think killing children leads to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. In this sense, my view of what makes an action right or wrong is connected to whether it leads to happiness or unhappiness, pain or pleasure, and so on.

Some people don't care about other people's unhappiness and so don't care about morality. I can't force them to do so. I can argue that their own lives will probably be worse if they aren't moral. But, at the end, like Satan rebelling against God, they can still decide to not care about other people. But their not caring doesn't imply either that killing children doesn't lead to unhappiness, pain, or suffering, or that I shouldn't care about those things myself. There is no a priori reason to assume that everyone will be motivated by morality. I don't have any deeper reason to care about my own or other people's happiness or flourishing than that I do and so can't prove to other people that they should as well. Nonetheless, I (and most other people) do have these desires and so find morality important.

Now, according to you, this conception of morality is either impossible or somehow conflicts with naturalism. Please identify either the incoherence or this conflict, because I don't see one.

Well yes, it's certainly easy to debate when you get to decide not only what you say, but also what those you argue with say.

I don't see much that pertains to my post here, so I'll merely note that introducing "god" into the debate you have imagined here doesn't resolve anything. "Morality can't exist just because someone says it does" isn't solved by saying "morality exists because someone says it does".

It's subjectively meaningful, sure. James Holmes believed he was making his life meaningful by taking people out of existence. He even assigned points towards each life he snuffed out. What makes him wrong?

Ya it matters subjectively, like I said, just like the murdered 5 year olds life means something to her and her parents. But once she's gone and everyone who ever remembered her is gone and everyone who ever remembered them is gone, her murder doesn't matter anymore. Not really.


That view is too simplistic. Pain, suffering and unhappiness to some degree are all essential for human growth and often point out the parts of our lives that need to change.

See above.

You claimed that the naturalistic worldview implies our lives don't matter. Here your claim that this is so depends on rejecting (4), which is commonly accepted by naturalists. Are you withdrawing your claim, or do you think (4) conflicts with other naturalistic premises?

Of course it's simplistic - I'm simplifying my views for brevity to the relevant points for this conversation. The view I sketched purports to do what you claim can't be done, that is, find value and morality in human life without appeal to the non-natural. Back up your claim that this can't be done by showing the inconsistency between this view of morality and naturalism.

I don't really understand what this is accomplishing, or what "it matters" means independent of a subject. Is this just a specialization? Are you really accomplishing something more than just asserting "my life matters to me"?

DoOrDoNot is claiming that naturalism implies that life doesn't matter. Most naturalists think life does matter. What I'm trying to do is provide a framework for DoOrDoNot to make explicit where he thinks these naturalists misunderstand the implications of their own beliefs. He has acknowledged that even on naturalist grounds our lives can matter to us subjectively. In my framework, this means he probably thinks that we can't derive from my life mattering to me to my life mattering. To justify this he'll have to give some account of why subjective mattering (or meaning or value) doesn't matter at all.

As for what it means for something to matter independent of a subject, I'm also wary of this making sense, but am holding off on challenging this part of DoOrDoNot's view until I have to. I don't need to argue that objective meaning, mattering, or value doesn't make sense as long as I can argue either special pleading or that subjective meaning also has objective value (in whatever sense is required).

I don't see how any of this means morality doesn't exist. The word "skunk" is an arbitrary sound that is capriciously given to a small striped critter. It emerges entirely from our minds and exists only by common agreement that that sound symbolizes the stink-ball in question. That doesn't mean "skunk word" does not really exist or is just an opinion, rather, we have described the means that bring it into existence.

Morality is not merely a subjective opinion, although we do have those. Moral codes clearly come in part from an evolved mental facility, as well as contingency, history, and consensus. We may have an opinion about the wisdom or rectitude of an ethic, but it still exists -- whether by natural, social, or divine origin.

Unfortunately for you it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, which is the entire point of all my posts. Subjectivity is totally dependent on that agent. Any subjective opinion of right and wrong is that...opinion. To elucidate once again, imagine for a second that you believe murder for pleasure is wrong, and Ted Bundy believes it is right. You put life above pleasure and his pleasure is taking life. Who is morally right and morally wrong here? In order to determine that one must 1. ASSUME that there is an objective moral truth so that the claim being made is no longer a subjective one but now objective or 2. APPEAL to a higher subjective authority.

Once again, you cannot proceed from a subjective opinion that life is meaningful to an objective statement that life is meaningful, especially in lieu of the scientific fact that life will cease to exist at some future point. The ultimate end of all life is death, so what's the objective value of propagating it?

And what I need you to do us admit there are agents right now that take pleasure in ending people who believe their lives matter, and that you have no basis on which to judge that action as right or wrong beyond "I believe life is meaningful."

You can't unless you appeal to an objective set of 'oughts' or a higher subjective authority, that is correct.

It doesn't matter beyond the subject, or you traverse subjectivity into objectivity by DEFINITION.

It exists subjectively. Language is a bad analogy because language obviously exists objectively. The word skunk exists whether or not anyone understand what it means, based on the definitions of language.

In that sense moral statements 'exist' but are still believed subjectively, rendering them impotent.

Sure it exists, but whether or not it applies is subjective opinion, rendering it essentially objectively meaningless.