On Moral Authorities

[GrandizerII]

Why should I listen to the involuntary vocalizations of an electro-chemical reaction?

Because it often helps?

[The Grand Nudger]

Good god, don't confuse a person who imagines that everything devolves into meaninglessness if they just so happened -not- to be embodied ghosts with complicated terms and concepts like "help".  They might skip a line and loop or something.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Only you could answer that, but here you are...so...is it really something you -need- an answer for?

I believe that you, like all human beings have choices, dignity, desires and purposes. The question serves to highlight that deterministic materialism precludes meaningful human interaction.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your belief is irrelevant, because regardless of whether or not I have all the "x" you believe me to have, or from where they might arise.....I still have morality, huh?  That I have a moral system is not an open issue of contention, as the accuracy of your beliefs are.

Here again we see that you can only allow meaning if it comports with whatever you think meaning must be. Perhaps it -doesn't- have the meaning you silently insist upon..and yet still...regardless of the accuracy of whatever -those- beliefs are, my interactions with humans are still meaningful.

Point is, if it's escaped you, is that it doesn't -matter- whether or not you're right or wrong about whatever it is you believe, Neo. Right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, existent or nonexistent, it's inapplicable to me.

[Ignorant]

The happiest human life consists in ____________.

Consider how you fill in the blank.

The "truer" your version, the better your "moral system".

The more your personal actions concur with the sorts of actions that bring about the happiest of human lives, the "more moral" your actions are.

The only sure moral authority is human happiness. In what does human happiness consist? Your answer to that question (the blank above) depends on what you think a human even is, i.e. to borrow an old word, it depends on what you think about the nature of humanity.

If there is such a thing as human nature, then human nature's perfection (i.e. its fullness, its completeness, its fulfillment) is its purpose. Human nature, on that account, would be the moral authority. If all people share that human nature, then human nature is the universal moral authority for every human. All people, therefore, would be subjects who try to act in ways that would perfect their nature (i.e. the object of their intellectual judgment), in common with every other person, according what they hold true (some holding truer things than others) about the reality of human nature, and therefore happiness. 

Nature does not have to mean the aristotelian-thomistic sense. If the nature of humanity includes transcendental reality (i.e. metaphysical goodness and truth and beauty), then evaluations of morality must also include transcendental considerations (i.e. an account of metaphysical goodness and truth and beauty).

If there is no such thing as human nature, then there is no such thing as human perfection in the universal sense. Arbitrary (in the sense that it is not directed [by] any object) individual judgment (i.e. pure subjectivity), on that account, would be the moral authority. If everyone is their own arbitrary moral authority, then there is no actual moral authority beyond those which are able to exert their own arbitrary judgment upon others. All people, therefore, would be subjects who try to act in ways that would conform either to their own arbitrary judgments about their delusions of happiness, or else, in common with their fellow coerced, that would conform to the exerted arbitrary judgments of another.

[Amarok]

Morality can only be objective with God

Please forgive me, but I'm not much of a debater, nor am I the intellectual type.  Could you elaborate on this statement a bit more, sir?

if you mean the part you have highlighted i guess i didn't signify it as a quote i was responding to my deepest apologies for the confusion  

[The Grand Nudger]

The happiest human life consists in ____________.

Consider how you fill in the blank.

No point, that's not the foundation of my moral system.  Whats expressed above would be hedonism in one form or another.  The pursuit of pleasure.

If there is no such thing as human nature, then there is no such thing as human perfection in the universal sense. Arbitrary (in the sense that it is not directed [by] any object) individual judgment (i.e. pure subjectivity), on that account, would be the moral authority. If everyone is their own arbitrary moral authority, then there is no actual moral authority beyond those which are able to exert their own arbitrary judgment upon others. All people, therefore, would be subjects who try to act in ways that would conform either to their own arbitrary judgments about their delusions of happiness, or else, in common with their fellow coerced, that would conform to the exerted arbitrary judgments of another.

I think that onc we appeal to individual judgment as a moral authority we have ceased to refer to moral authority in a meaningful sense, maybe in a practical sense...as in, as close to a moral authority as anything gets.  In this, again, we see the notion that power, the ability to exert moral judgement on others, makes one a moral authority which could only -be- true in the more meaningful sense of a moral authority if might made right....which isn't something I'd agree with in any case.  

Though I have to say...that on the balance of what we see in the world with all these competing moral systems, I'd say that all of the above looks to be the case, at least as practically employed by human beings and insomuch as we have a lessened bar for moral authority expressed therein. In short....whats expressed above seems to -be- how we "do morality" - but I'd chalk that up to us being less-than-rational creatures who consistently fail even by their own moral standards to adhere to moral standards, lol.

[robvalue]

Ignorant: You've just stated the goals of morality as you see them. If I disagree about what the goals should be, then what?

For one thing, it doesn't even mention other animals at all. According to that, I can do anything I like to them as long as it doesn't upset humans without being "immoral".

[robvalue]

In fact, it would be considered moral to torture an animal if everyone enjoyed it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hallelujah!