Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[genkaus]

As a by-product of evolution conscience would be no different than any other animal’s instinctual behavior, like bird migration. If conscience is an accidental feature of our species then it is not a reliable guide for ethical behavior.

Except, I never said that your conscience was a by-product of evolution or that it was instinctual.

To avoid the equivocation between conscience and instinct, you need not consider conscience an evolved instinct, per se, even if the means by which it appeared is evolutionary. You could say that it is a product of Man’s capacity to reason. This affords various solutions like enlightened self-interest, tit-for-tat, the “golden rule”, social contract theory, etc.

Glad you understand as much.

The problem is that you have started a regress that needs a termination point. By making reason the evolutionary by-product from which conscience gets its force, you must likewise explain how reason, itself being an accidental feature is reliable. First, you could say that the efficacy of reason is axiomatic. While I agree this presupposition is needed, the fact that you can reason at all is itself in need of an explanation. The required explanation forces the regress further back into the deeper prior causes.

Try not to slip in any more shoddy equivocations. The ability to reason is an evolutionary by-product. Reason itself is neither accidental nor presupposed. Don't confuse the axiomatic nature of reason with a presupposition.

The efficacy of reason presupposes that you live in a world with inherit rational order.

Wrong. Whatever inherent order the world has is called rational. Its not a presupposition, its tautology.

This appears to be the case. Now either the rational order of the world is essential, a brute fact, or it is accidental, a contingent feature. In my estimation, the four fundamental forces and handful of known constants have all the characteristics of accidental attributes. First you can imagine a world with more or fewer forces and one in which the constants have different values, or even change within this universe. Second, even if the universe did indeed come “out of nothing” on its own, then so also must its physical laws come with it “out of nothing.” In this scenario, the secular response to “out of nothing, nothing comes” amounts to “out of absurdity, something comes.” Any morality that, at root, derives from absurdity is really no morality at all.

Your ability to conceive a world with different laws does not indicate their accidental nature but your power of imagination. The order of the world - its nature and the way it works - is a brute fact and what we regard as reason or rational derives from the identification of that fact. That which goes against the order of the world is regarded as absurd and irrational - which means that morality derived from reason, by definition, does not derive from absurdity.

So the de-nihilists, atheists who deny that they are nihilists, must, if they are to be taken seriously, show that their favored ethical system is ultimately supported by something other than pure chance.

A rational support for their ethical system accomplishes that quite well.

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See the problem with de-nihilists, is this. They trust their conscience, but not its source. They form ethical systems based on reason without accepting the basis of the world's rational order. Its been 14 pages of "works for me" without any reflection on why it works. Nihilism is the logical conclusion of atheism. De-nilhism is the refusing to face that conclusion.

And here I thought you were better cognizant of philosophy than that.

Asking "what is the basis of world's rational order?" is as ridiculous as asking "why is a circle round?". The way the world works is how we defined what is rational. If we lived in a world of contradictions - where circles were square, A=/=A and effects preceding causes, then we'd regard that as rational and consider round circles absurd.

It is this ignorance that leads to absurd conclusions like "nihilism is the logical conclusion of atheism".

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What I'll never understand is why so many assume that morality reduces to rule following with the corollary assumption that there are a set of rules which are objectively the best.

Morality is about both - defining which rules to follow and and following them. Determining which set of rules is objectively the best and why - or if there could be such a set of rules - is what discussions on the topic are all about.

Moreover, even if such a thing did exist, why would anyone want to live their life obsessed with the moral potential of every decision. Seems like a very narrow and limited life to me.

Because - depending on the moral code - following or not following the rules would have very real consequences in your life. Without a set of conscious principles to follow, you are just being a slave to your whims and desires. That is how animals live and that seems like a narrow and limited life to me. Without a consistent moral code it is not possible to realize your life's full potential.

The question of how to instill values in young people should be a very different question than the place of morality in the lives of morally mature adults.

That those adults are morally mature is yet to be established.

Rule following has got to be transcended for maturity's sake if one ever aspires to be a peer of the realm. The obsession with 'being good' needs to be set aside.

Rule following has to be observed for maturity's sake. Recognizing the value of rules and norms is a part of being mature. Transcendence requires an understanding of why they valuable and thus the judgment of why some of them may be obsolete.

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Did I make such a choice? I don't ever recall doing that. It was kinda there from whence unknown.

Thus my statement that either you choose it or it is chosen for you.

This is more interesting. How much choice might I have had? How much of supposed choice is open to me if there is an element of biological programming? How might biological programming have affected the moral choices my society made?

Whilst for all the minor issues you might be right I do think there are biological imperatives at play here that have evolved through natural selection to maximize the chances of the species surviving.

We are naturally inclined to cooperate together. We are naturally inclined not to want to murder each other and so on.

At the same time - as a result of our development we have higher centres of the brain that can over-ride that which is innate. This is not, in my opinion, contradictory. Flexibility should also be considered as potentially biologically beneficial.

At its most basal level its going to be very hard to differentiate ethics and morality from instinct. If we accept that instinct is pre-programming then fundamentals of ethics morality may well be too.

Your view regarding how different factors weigh into morality is simplistic, to say the least. To put it in visual terms, you talk as if you imagine there to be a biological angel on one shoulder saying "save that man. He's drowning" and a rational angel on another saying "no, don't. Too dangerous" and your decision is a result of that interaction. The reality is that there has already been a very complex interaction between your biology, your emotions and your rationality even before any moral consideration comes into the picture.

For example, you are incorrect in assuming that we are naturally inclined to cooperate or that we are naturally inclined not to murder. The so-called biological imperatives rarely rise to the level of an imperative - a dictate that has to be followed. The instinct to cooperate with an entity similar to me might be present - but it is not always there nor is it always the dominant instinct. I could instinctually regard the person as competition, in which case the instinct to attack would be dominant. If, based on physical appearance, my instincts tell me he is a threat, then the dominant instinct would be to run away. Simply put, your instincts tell you different and contradictory things at different times, which is why they are not the basis of your morality. More often than not, however, your rational considerations do override your instincts. Once you know a person to be cooperative - by word or by deed - your inclination to be cooperative in return is the result of that rational consideration - even if your instincts still regard him as a competitor or threat. Similarly, if you know him to be a liar, then your inclination is to not cooperate.

Simply put, even what you regard as your instinctive reaction is not actually your biological instinct but the subconscious interplay of your rationality, emotions and instincts.