Your personal take on “The Problem of Evil?”

[Esquilax]

Hi Esquilax.

You ask me to consider a hypothetical that is contrary to both our beliefs. I'm not sure where we can go with that because we're then discussing something that neither of us believe in, and that never seems to have much value to me.

Well, you mentioned belief in a moral law giver, and the purpose of the hypothetical was to show how unconnected such an entity would be to the determining of morals. Perhaps you're familiar with the Euthyphro Dilemma? It essentially asks what I did: is your given moral law giver capable of changing the nature of his moral laws? If the answer is yes then the actual content of morality is meaningless, compared to the preferences of the one in authority over it. If the answer is no, then morality exists apart from the law giver, and its role is reduced to little more than a messenger, passing the facts about morality down to the people.

Now, you seem to be saying- correct me if I'm wrong- that morals cannot be changed by the declaration of the law giver, which is good because if you'd said otherwise I literally could not continue the conversation, as that position is completely unassailable. But in a world where the moral system cannot be changed even by the being whom you believe created that system, then evidently the system and determinations therein are not a product of the law giver, but rather a compilation of its observations about morality. Given this, it isn't beyond us to make the same observations without recourse to the law giver at all, but it also should prompt us to ask where those observations came from.

My belief is that moral actions align roughly along an axis of their predicted benefit or harm to individuals. Evil acts uniformly cause harm without any balancing benefit, or benefit only to the party performing them, at a greater cost to those they are inflicted upon. Good acts uniformly provide benefits surpassing their costs, or benefit others at a cost only to the one performing the act. I don't think this is a coincidence, that morality just happens to align to our benefit, despite being determined from elsewhere. I think morality is inextricably linked to our observed reality as thinking biological agents.

But I'll say what I can within what I do actually believe. I would say that whenever the situation is the same there is always one better path. I don't think two situations can be identical, and one day one action be best and the other day another action be best. I'm happy to acknowledge that I accept that as an axiom, I accept it as a basic presuppositional belief. For the best action to vary by day and not by setting, would seem to require the abandonment of any moral standard of right and wrong. But certainly choices are specific to the setting; I might tell a child not to hurt another child, while fully accepting that a doctor is going to hurt me with a needle. Or I might tell a young child that they must be back by 6pm, while I now tell my grown up children simply to be quiet if returning late.

What you're describing here is situational ethics, and it's basically my position too: context matters, and moral decisions must be made within the framework of the scenario at hand. But have you ever wondered why that is? What is the difference between stopping one child from hurting another, and taking that same child to be hurt by a vaccination? In truth, it's the result: the former action has no beneficial result, only harm, while the latter brings a substantial benefit versus the temporary pain. The moral value you're using is the same- inflicting pain is morally bad- but in the situations you're comparing that value to, the results are very different.

That's why I'm more inclined to view morals as sets of general rules that can be applied to varying degrees depending on circumstance, and abandoned temporarily in extreme circumstances; killing is morally wrong but I doubt any one of us would find killing someone in the defense of an innocent to be evil. At the same time, we recognize that killing even the potential murderer isn't the preferred option, and that if you have a way to end the conflict non-lethally that should be the path you take. So not only do we gradate our moral values based on context, but also on how they come into conflict with each other; in the above scenario the moral principle of preserving life is in conflict with the moral principle of protecting those in danger, and the latter wins out, for obvious reasons.

The point is that morality is fluid, at least to a degree, and that this has a lot to do with how we derive it.

On your defence of happiness as the moral standard, are you now saying happiness is not actually the aim, but is subservient to length of life? So happiness is not good in and of itself, but because it achieves something else (length of live in this first instance).

Not quite. From a purely evolutionary standpoint what I'm saying is that those traits and instincts that prolong the life and better ensure a mate are propagated throughout a population better than those that do the opposite. That's just natural selection at work, and our social instincts are largely based around that fact. We are the sons and daughters of those who possessed those traits that led them to procreate, and gregariousness achieves that end better than social awkwardness does.

I'd also point out that by saying happiness is good because it achieves something else, all you're really saying is that there is a reason that happiness is good. Things have effects, there is nothing in the world that exists without influencing something else in some way, and of course the benefits and consequences of a thing will affect how we view it. The alternative is saying that a thing is good just because, and I don't know why anyone would find that convincing.

If so we can abandon happiness as the aim and clearly state that the aim is for longer life (but what if that costs society, for example keeping people alive after their 'productive' life?).

That would be fine, if the only moral good was the extension of life. I don't think either of us believe that's the case, though. Nor is it the only reason that happiness is good; the fact that it feels good is a perfectly valid reason on its own.

Or you say happiness has an aim of securing a mate. But if happiness is subservient to mating why not ditch happiness and embrace rape?

Please, this isn't a utilitarian either/or dichotomous situation, you don't need to swing out wildly in the other direction whenever I give an example. There are other axes of morality at play here, and also you're mistaking the natural origins of morality for its current state. When I'm speaking on the evolutionary beginnings of morality I'm only discussing the basic, prototypical version of it; obviously as our culture expands and becomes more advanced, so too do the moral considerations. "Is" does not imply "ought," and in the case of humans we have advanced beyond the instinctive, naturally selected morality of our ancestors.

Surely the rapist is much more valuable, morally 'better', than the homosexual in this line of thought that makes morality subservient to mating success?

Do you happen to remember that group dynamics are our survival niche? Even within the parameters of the- I believe false- scenario you're constructing, the rapist sows distrust and harm within the group, he is a detriment to it even if his genes flourish, and the propagation of such harmful traits would lead to the destruction of the population, in time.

Do you see how you've moved away from happiness being the goal, and are now in a rather awkward place? I believe that if you follow this path then you are going to have to defend some things that are pretty reprehensible to our consciences. Again, there is no moral 'right' here - if we choose to adopt the behaviour of animals who kill and rape each other, and are successful in passing on our genes, then why not? Why shouldn't our genes win victory through these means? It seems to me you're simply back to behaviour with no moral standard. Actions speak louder than words here, I think, and I see few people living by that philosophy, and those that do are usually subject to our just opprobrium.

Don't mistake "one goal" for "just one goal," is my advice to you. As I mentioned above, there is no one overarching principle, but rather a series of intersecting and occasionally conflicting ones that need to be metered by the context in which they are relevant. It's a complicated topic, which is why I didn't waste thousands of words exhaustively describing it, but unfortunately in these conversations people often make the mistake you did, of seeing my brevity as me reaching the limits of the topic. Oh well.

Hopefully what I've written here clears that up.