RE: So is rape reeeally wrong?
June 17, 2014 at 1:57 pm
(This post was last modified: June 17, 2014 at 1:58 pm by Mudhammam.)
(June 17, 2014 at 9:36 am)whateverist Wrote: When ChadW asks "but why is it wrong" it seems he means "why shouldn't one do it" rather than "why is it we've come to this widely held belief that it is wrong to do so". The actual origins of moral phenomena - the answer to the "how did it come to be" question - doesn't, as DeistP so ably explained, carry any ought.
But neither does its natural origins erase the ought. Likewise we don't stop enjoying bacon or sex once we come to understand the functional origins of those desires. Moral considerations aren't really that different than other motivational forces. They just plug into something very deeply rooted in our psyches. Our connection to family and to tribe - and therefore anything which might sever that connection - will trigger all those raw compulsive feelings involving love, honor and duty.
Rationality doesn't sit apart from the body deciding abstractly what is required, permitted or forbidden. Apart from all those raw compulsive feelings, there are no ends for rationality to work toward. Reasoned systems of how best to serve our many impulses to care for and earn the respect of the tribe, never replace the role of those base desires.
To quote Sam Harris, with whom I fully agree here:
"Ethics is prescriptive only because we tend to talk about it that way—and I believe this emphasis comes, in large part, from the stultifying influence of Abrahamic religion. We could just as well think about ethics descriptively. Certain experiences, relationships, social institutions, and technological developments are possible—and there are more or less direct ways to arrive at them. Again, we have a navigation problem. To say we “should” follow some of these paths and avoid others is just a way of saying that some lead to happiness and others to misery. “You shouldn’t lie” (prescriptive) is synonymous with “Lying needlessly complicates people’s lives, destroys reputations, and undermines trust” (descriptive). “We should defend democracy from totalitarianism” (prescriptive) is another way of saying “Democracy is far more conducive to human flourishing than the alternatives are” (descriptive). In my view, moralizing notions like “should” and “ought” are just ways of indicating that certain experiences and states of being are better than others."
