Good and Evil

[bennyboy]

For example, sex.  There's nothing really wrong with it...

Perhaps not "wrong." But sex is hardly a benign feature of evolutionary history. It keeps the species going, but usually at the detriment of the individual. Such creatures as salmon literally die to get their rocks off. Within human societies, our freedom to choose partners for love and seek pleasurable self-fulfillment through sexual enactments of our own choosing is a recent phenomenon, going back no further than the 18th century in the Western world.

Exactly.  So part of the moral code of sex, even for non-religious people, is that we struggle to mediate our animal desires with our human ability to consider consequences.  If you're married, it's immoral to fuck someone else-- not because you're that likely to actually impregnate someone or get a disease (if you're careful at least), but because your wife ALSO has animal instincts, and your failure to control your instinct is almost certainly going to trigger a god-awful emotional (read: animal) reaction in her.

And while you are spending time and resources chasing some ho, paying her off so she won't tell your wife, promising her that someday, you'll separate from your wife, telling your wife you're going to the bar and then explaining why your friends called to ask if you were free to come out, etc. etc., and while your wife is investigating, getting stressed, discovering the truth, getting furious, divorcing you, telling your kids what a prick you are, etc. etc. what are none of you doing? Taking positive steps toward achieving your potential in life.

[Whateverist]

You are correct to say that race, ethnicity and gender are social constructs. It does not follow from that fact that there is no such thing as human nature.

Here we are in perfect in agreement. Well said.

I wonder if you'd agree that there is no authoritative definition of human nature of what constitutes our fulfillment? The only authority comes from the person who recognizes what is true for them, and them alone. They can be correct and so can the person who makes another choice.

[Hatshepsut]

...but emotion must be just as rational as any other process that takes place in human brains. There's no essential difference between the tissues that generate emotion in the brain and those that generate "rational" thoughts...

The areas of the brain in which people reason fallaciously are the same regions of the brain involved in valid reasoning.  That does not mean that fallacious reasoning is just as reasonable as valid reasoning.  But if you were right, then they would have to be equally reasonable...

I've noticed the word shifted from "rational" to "reasonable" albeit as vaguely defined as both these terms are, it doesn't matter. I haven't denied the existence of rules for formal and informal logic, or that a verbal argument can be evaluated for validity and soundness according to these rules. I'll take it that's what you mean by "reasonable." I've merely asserted that emotion and rational thought are roughly equivalent in their overall power to take reality into account.

The only precision rules in logic are those that parallel set theory in mathematics, such as the syllogism which is an expression of set intersection or containment. Violations in formal logic, such as the fallacy of composition, all trace back to faulty syllogism in one way or another. Formal logic is quite powerful but comes at a cost of having to make simplifying assumptions about reality. Categories are treated as if exactly defined and kept few in number; every statement is either true or false so as to use the law of the excluded middle. Unfortunately, many situations in the real world are difficult to approach this way. For instance, when implementing ethics through law, decisions result from a process of personal influence and deal-cutting that largely ignores reasoned argumentation except when writing it up afterward. Almost all legal reasoning is post hoc, designed to justify what has already been decided.

Emotion allows one to rapidly assess the significance of new information, especially if that information is incomplete or contains contradictory elements, without making the categorical assumptions logic requires. Most of the time, instinctive thinking is the more useful to us in the real world, where we don't have time to analyze everything and test every conclusion. The downside is that conclusions reached by intuition or emotion are less reliable than those that can be established by formal reasoning.

Many (informal) fallacies relate to emotion, including the hint of ad hominem I detected in your post at the word "ridiculous." What better way to win than to impeach your opponent's basic intelligence before presenting your own material?  

...So its okay to abuse animals, keep them in conditions worse than slavery. ...there are many negative side-effects of keeping animals in conditions of abject misery.

I'm not sure how the PETA agenda entered this thread, but it's a good example of how reason doesn't decide issues. Those who feel the ethical boundary of "personhood," or perhaps "sentience," should extend to farm animals reach their position early on without any formal reasoning, simply by looking into the eyes of their porcine friends and letting the gut tell them how it is. Later, they'll use logic to aid construction of a public debating position so they don't look totally foolish. Yet a law banning factory farming won't pass until vegans have enough political support, most of which they'll have to garner by emotional appeals to power brokers. 

[Neo-Scholastic]

I wonder if you'd agree that there is no authoritative definition of human nature of what constitutes our fulfillment?  The only authority comes from the person who recognizes what is true for them, and them alone.  They can be correct and so can the person who makes another choice.

Then whatever each person identified as their nature would not have any universal commonalities with everyone else. In that case there is no reason for saying that anyone else is truly human or has human rights. Having a nature and the ability to fully define it are two separate questions. I do believe however that reasonable people can agree on the basics such as rational animal.

[bennyboy]

Then whatever each person identified as their nature would not have any universal commonalities with everyone else. In that case there is no reason for saying that anyone else is truly human or has human rights.

Supervenient qualities transcend their component parts. A person is more than just a bunch of particles-- a person is also the relationship among those particles.

I would say that the morality of a given society is a complex web of relations between that society's members. It is an order of magnitude more complex, and less concrete, than the mores of the individuals. Human rights may be hard to define, but they are still there, in the way the society as a whole treats its members.

[Whateverist]

I wonder if you'd agree that there is no authoritative definition of human nature of what constitutes our fulfillment?  The only authority comes from the person who recognizes what is true for them, and them alone.  They can be correct and so can the person who makes another choice.

Then whatever each person identified as their nature would not have any universal commonalities with everyone else. In that case there is no reason for saying that anyone else is truly human or has human rights. Having a nature and the ability to fully define it are two separate questions. I do believe however that reasonable people can agree on the basics such as rational animal.

I certainly don't think anyone is infallibly able to correctly identify their own nature. I'm just saying there is no authoritative alternative.

That doesn't mean there isn't a correct answer. But if you say rationality is a part of it then that is going to permit a wide variety of interpretation and expression. Only thing I'm sure of is there is no sure fire, one-size fits all choice. The only thing certain is uncertainty. Accepting that seems like an important part of embracing your nature to me.

[IATIA]

The only thing certain is uncertainty.

Are you certain?

[Whateverist]

I see what you did there. Now I'm not so sure about my uncertainty. Crap.

[robvalue]

Good = stuff that I say is good

Evil = stuff that I say is evil

Whoops, I forgot I'm not God.

[bennyboy]

Good = stuff that I say is good

Evil = stuff that I say is evil

Whoops, I forgot I'm not God.

Speak for yourself.  As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is good or evil.