Atheism and morality

[Rahul]

You're probably one of those people who thinks vegetarianism is immoral because Hitler was one.

Thanks for the snide insult. How old are you? 14?

Answer the question: does he have any reason not to disembowel the prostitute?

Yes. Absolutely. It goes against his natural instincts as a social animal. It means he's a sociopath and a cancer among the human race.

Then answer this question: is it wrong for him to disembowel the prostitute?

Of course. Causing pain and misery is always wrong.

Then answer this question: if it is wrong to do something do you have reason not to do it?

Of course. Because I have to live with myself. And I'm my own worst critic.

I am the one person I can not avoid. And if I'm a bad person my own internal conscience will torment me with that. My opinion of myself will drop into the gutter. My feeling of self-worth will be non-existent.

And I don't need some stone age god myth to create something in me that I was born with.

[simplexity]

He's about to die, thicky! Can't you read? He's about to die and the one thing he really wants to do before he dies is disembowel a prostitute. Does he have any reason not to? Would he be irrational to refrain?

No, he doesn't have any direct 'moral reason' to not want too. Not only is it that he cannot sense his moral system, his moral system is missing. One cannot sense something that is not there. He is lacking the self reflecting subroutine of the conscience. Now most people have one, so according to MY morality I think he should have reason to not do it, but that doesn't mean he has the reason.

It also is not 'wrong' according to HIS morality to do this because he is lacking correct guidelines in his own moral system.

It is wrong according to most of society so in that regard he does have reason to not do it because he can reflect about other consequences. Jail, failure of society, ending of an awareness of reality, and so on. These are not moralities, but only justifications which are separate from the ideas of his morality, yet pertain to them. So what if he's about to die? It's wrong to the rest of society.

[Angrboda]

I have already addressed the point about a Karmic universe. But I'll do so again because I'm bloody nice and tolerant.

A karmic law of supernature is not an instruction. It is just a description of what is going to happen. Second, such a view would not be able to account for moral desert.

We appear to have passed by each other in the edit once again. I'll try to contain my editing prior to post, given the frequency of your replies.

I added the bolded portion below.

Note however that your second syllogism doesn't seem to offer, in itself, any reason to prefer the formulation "a vengeful god who has control over your afterlife" to "an unforgiving and inflexible karmic law which will condemn you to an eternity of incarnations filled with suffering if you do not behave morally, as communicated by the uncreated and eternally existing Vedas." In particular, it's possible the Vedas issue from an agent and we are simply ignorant of their true source, so arguing that they require an agent is ineffective. The moral instruction contained in the traditional Indian metaphysics appears to offer an equivalent and equally rationally compelling reason for complying; why prefer one to the other?

As my amended post noted, the fact that we are not aware of the source of karmic law does not in and of itself imply that there isn't one, so that is an argument from ignorance and/or silence. And again, as noted previously, your account has not provided an account of moral desert either, so requiring the karmic law scenario to provide one is special pleading; matter of fact, your account seems to vacate the whole concept of moral desert. By your account, we obey the instructions of this god, not because his instructions are worth obeying, but simply because the consequences of doing otherwise would be unpleasant. (I noticed in your thread about Mary and "Immoral atheists" that you appear stuck in the rut of consequentialist ethics. While you seem to imply you are widely read in ethics, when the rubber hits the road, you seem utterly incapable of seeing anything but a consequentialist ethics, your inescapably evil god scenario being a case in point.)




Moreover, it occurred to me that while an agent may be required for issuing the instruction, it does not necessarily follow that the agent issuing the instruction is at all responsible for the consequences that make the instruction itself inescapably compelling. If we were on a forum which censored swear words and automatically banned upon reaching a certain quotient, and you had repeatedly violated the prohibition, I might warn you that if you continue such behavior then you would be banned. In that case, I am an agent, I am issuing an instruction, the instruction is inescapably rationally compelling, and yet I am not in control of whether you do or do not experience the consequences. And before you point out that the content of the instructions themselves had to originally issue from an agent, which I could dispute, that is not the specific problem here. The problem is in inferring from an instruction the existence of an agent responsible for that instruction. My mother used to advise me all the time, occasionally with threats of the consequences of my actions. Sometimes my mother would be the agent responsible for the consequences, sometimes not. She passed away in 2002 and so the inescapably rationally compelling nature of her threats is no longer real, but I still recall her instructions. What in your syllogism a) requires that the agent in question be the one responsible for creating the consequences of your actions, and b) even if I were to accept that these instructions require an agent who can offer rationally compelling reasons for obeying, what in your syllogism implies, if at all, that this agent is currently existent? In other words, your syllogism suggests that morality at one time had a real substance, but it doesn't demonstrate that it still retains that substance, and has not in the passing of time become merely hallucinatory.

[NoahsFarce]

Jack really loves disembowelling prostitutes. He bloody loves it! He's got terminal cancer and is going to die next week. He decides he'll disembowel one last prostitute for old time's sake.

If you think he has reason not to disembowel a prostitute but do not believe there is any god or afterlife kindly explain.

Did you just read parts of my post, or did you actually take some time to read it? My comment addresses your current question.

But here:

Jack doesn't have a reason not to disembowel a prostitute. That's his prerogative. There will always be outliers like Jack in this world. They are not the norm, they are the exception. If people like Jack were the norm, it would be detrimental to the survival of our species.

Jack's brain is wired differently. To him, there is no moral issue at hand. Well, maybe there is and he ignores it because of some demented condition. To the average human being, what Jack is doing is immoral. But we aren't all going to agree on the exact reasons why it's immoral. This is what I meant when I said that there seems to be a universal set of morals that we all follow different paths to reach.

The evolutionary reason for the norm to find Jack's action immoral is because we are a social species. We survive because of our numbers and our collective intelligence.

Anyone else hearing that broken record? I sure hope you actually read my comment thoroughly this time.

[Inigo]

For some reason I never seem able to quote from your replies. I do not know why this is. So I will quote in traditional fashion. YOu say this:
"As my amended post noted, the fact that we are not aware of the source of karmic law does not in and of itself imply that there isn't one, so that is an argument from ignorance and/or silence. And again, as noted previously, your account has not provided an account of moral desert either, so requiring the karmic law scenario to provide one is special pleading; matter of fact, your account seems to vacate the whole concept of moral desert. By your account, we obey the instructions of this god, not because his instructions are worth obeying, but simply because the consequences of doing otherwise would be unpleasant. (I noticed in your thread about Mary and "Immoral atheists" that you appear stuck in the rut of consequentialist ethics. While you seem to imply you are widely read in ethics, when the rubber hits the road, you seem utterly incapable of seeing anything but a consequentialist ethics, your inescapably evil god scenario being a case in point.)"

It is unclear to me why you think I am a consequentialist. I am not, or at least not exclusively. Anyway, consequentialism is a normative moral view, not a metaethical one. My metaethical position is consistent with any normative view. It is a theory about what morality is, not what it instructs us to do and be.

I have pointed out in an earlier reply to Frodo that generating instructions with inescapable rational authority could be achieved without positing a vengeful god but by positing laws of supernature according to which we will come to harm if we act in certain ways and positing in addition a 'catcher in the rye' god who's only concern is to protect our interests and so is instructing us in ways that, should we comply, will mean we do not come to harm.

But I also noted problems with this. First, it over-complicates the picture for no reason. If we can account for the inescapable rational authority of moral instructions in a simpler way, that is the reasonable explanation to go for. Second, it would not capture moral desert. I pointed out that when we do wrong it seems clear to most of us that we now 'deserve' harm. If we identify moral instructions with the instructions of a vengeful god then when someone fails to comply with her instructions we will sense (those with reliable moral senses, anyway) that the instructor now wants that person to come to harm. So positing a vengeful god actually enables us to predict moral desert. Finally when we ssense that an act is wrong it seems the existence of the instruction has somehow brought it about that we now have reason to comply with it. This is not properly captured if the reason we have to comply is independent of the instructor.

Together these amount, in my view, to decisive reason to reject the Karmic view and a Karmic view with a god added to it.

---

You also say this:

"Moreover, it occurred to me that while an agent may be required for issuing the instruction, it does not necessarily follow that the agent issuing the instruction is at all responsible for the consequences that make the instruction itself inescapably compelling. If we were on a forum which censored swear words and automatically banned upon reaching a certain quotient, and you had repeatedly violated the prohibition, I might warn you that if you continue such behavior then you would be banned. In that case, I am an agent, I am issuing an instruction, the instruction is inescapably rationally compelling, and yet I am not in control of whether you do or do not experience the consequences. And before you point out that the content of the instructions themselves had to originally issue from an agent, which I could dispute, that is not the specific problem here. The problem is in inferring from an instruction the existence of an agent responsible for that instruction. My mother used to advise me all the time, occasionally with threats of the consequences of my actions. Sometimes my mother would be the agent responsible for the consequences, sometimes not. She passed away in 2002 and so the inescapably rationally compelling nature of her threats is no longer real, but I still recall her instructions. What in your syllogism a) requires that the agent in question be the one responsible for creating the consequences of your actions, and b) even if I were to accept that these instructions require an agent who can offer rationally compelling reasons for obeying, what in your syllogism implies, if at all, that this agent is currently existent? In other words, your syllogism suggests that morality at one time had a real substance, but it doesn't demonstrate that it still retains that substance, and has not in the passing of time become merely hallucinatory."

Our concept of a moral instruction is of an instruction that has inescapable rational authority. The inescapability requires that the agent exist and exist for an incredibly long time. If she is about to die tomorrow then her instructions lack inescapable rational authority. I do not have reason to obey them. She'll be dead tomorrow. So the positing of a god who is going to die soon will not account for the inescapable rational authority of moral instructions.

---

Jack really loves disembowelling prostitutes. He bloody loves it! He's got terminal cancer and is going to die next week. He decides he'll disembowel one last prostitute for old time's sake.

If you think he has reason not to disembowel a prostitute but do not believe there is any god or afterlife kindly explain.

Did you just read parts of my post, or did you actually take some time to read it? My comment addresses your current question.

But here:

Jack doesn't have a reason not to disembowel a prostitute. That's his prerogative. There will always be outliers like Jack in this world. They are not the norm, they are the exception. If people like Jack were the norm, it would be detrimental to the survival of our species.

Jack's brain is wired differently. To him, there is no moral issue at hand. Well, maybe there is and he ignores it because of some demented condition. To the average human being, what Jack is doing is immoral. But we aren't all going to agree on the exact reasons why it's immoral. This is what I meant when I said that there seems to be a universal set of morals that we all follow different paths to reach.

The evolutionary reason for the norm to find Jack's action immoral is because we are a social species. We survive because of our numbers and our collective intelligence.

Anyone else hearing that broken record? I sure hope you actually read my comment thoroughly this time.

So, you accept that in a world with no god and an afterlife Jack has no reason to refrain from disembowelling a prostitute.

Now, does he do anything wrong if he disembowels a prostitute?

Note what I am asking you. I am asking you if HE did anything wrong. Don't tell me he doesn't believe himself to be doing anything wrong. I am not asking you that. I am asking you if he did anything wrong.

[simplexity]

I pointed out that when we do wrong it seems clear to most of us that we now 'deserve' harm.

When we do wrong and/or think of a wrong outcome it is not clear that we all think we deserve harm necessarily. Instead we are harmed emotionally/neurotically, in a very literal sense. After the emotional upheaval some may however, wish harm upon themselves, but this is an effect of being harmed emotionally. I think this fits with the karmic view of morality very well, even though this is a purely scientific understanding.

[Angrboda]

Well, I'd point out more about your use of the law of parsimony, and in particular, the distinction between the strong and weak versions of it, but I'm feeling lazy, so perhaps another time. Unless you are employing the strong version, the law of parsimony is not a deductive inference, but merely a probabilistic one, and therefore your syllogism becomes one of determining the most likely explanation given a range of explanations, and, under that view, must then be probabilistically evaluated in comparison to all other hypotheses. It is no longer a deductively valid syllogism in its present form, given your interpretations.

And you're making more arguments from silence. The fact that we are ignorant of the moral authority's absence, or ignorant of the disconnect between agent and instruction, is not evidence of its non-absence, nor evidence that the agent and instruction are unified.

You still have failed to provide anything more than a bare assertion that your account explains moral desert. Most here, as well as many moral philosophers, would argue that your account does just the opposite. How is the fact that some agent can make my eternity unpleasant lead to the conclusion that I am deserving to be treated that way by this possibly non-existent agent for failing to satisfy its desires?

[NoahsFarce]

So, you accept that in a world with no god and an afterlife Jack has no reason to refrain from disembowelling a prostitute.

Now, does he do anything wrong if he disembowels a prostitute?

Note what I am asking you. I am asking you if HE did anything wrong. Don't tell me he doesn't believe himself to be doing anything wrong. I am not asking you that. I am asking you if he did anything wrong.

Jack has plenty of reason to refrain from doing such. But his disorder prevents him from such control over his own actions.

Do I personally think he's doing something wrong? Well of course. That should have been obvious to you in my explanation that we generally don't go around killing each other. It would be detrimental to our survival. So again I say, FROM AND EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT, morals have utility.

[Mystical]

Talk about instincts all you want. Jack doesn't care. He wants to disembowel a prostitute and he has nothing to lose. What reason does HE have to not disembowel a prostitute if there is no god and an afterlife?

Personal abhorrence?

Unfortunately there are people that are born with no conscience. We lock up those people when they harm others.

I agree with Rahul. Personal abhorrence. Why? Because experiences directly affect your body. They've measured karma in the works.

I read an article a few years back about a new field of genetic science called epigenetics. Simply put, epigenetics is the genetics of genetics. It regulates what genetic switch goes on or off.
This experiment involved cloned mice. After cloning them, the mice had the exact identical epigenome. One was put in a cage with a maternal mother, one with a neglectful mother. That was the Only difference in the mice experiences: Experience. After some time they tested the mice which had totally different epigenomes, and the mouse with the mother who was neglectful had all sorts of illness markers and physical symptoms. For one it was predisposed to high blood pressure and anxiety. What fascinates me about the implications of this is that experience alters your body. When they switched the mothers with the baby mice: the factors resolved or deteriorated.

The quality of parental care has a broad impact on mental health, including the risk for psychopathology [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Studies in the rat directly link the maternal care environment to long-term effects on neural systems that regulate stress [6], [7] emotional function[8], [9], learning and memory [10], [11], [12] and neuroplasticity [10], [13], [14], [15]. Naturally occurring variations in maternal care in the first week of life in rats are associated with changes in brain and behavior that persist until adulthood [16]. These effects are reversed by cross-fostering, [7], [9] demonstrating a causal link between maternal care and gene expression programming.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/...ndGenomics+

[Inigo]

Well, I'd point out more about your use of the law of parsimony, and in particular, the distinction between the strong and weak versions of it, but I'm feeling lazy, so perhaps another time. Unless you are employing the strong version, the law of parsimony is not a deductive inference, but merely a probabilistic one, and therefore your syllogism becomes one of determining the most likely explanation given a range of explanations, and, under that view, must then be probabilistically evaluated in comparison to all other hypotheses. It is no longer a deductively valid syllogism in its present form, given your interpretations.

And you're making more arguments from silence. The fact that we are ignorant of the moral authority's absence, or ignorant of the disconnect between agent and instruction, is not evidence of its non-absence, nor evidence that the agent and instruction are unified.

You still have failed to provide anything more than a bare assertion that your account explains moral desert. Most here, as well as many moral philosophers, would argue that your account does just the opposite. How is the fact that some agent can make my eternity unpleasant lead to the conclusion that I am deserving to be treated that way by this possibly non-existent agent for failing to satisfy its desires?

First, no my original argument showed that morality required the existence of a supernatural agent with immense power over our interests. The 'catcher in the rye' god is still a god - still an agency with immense power over our interests. So the argument stands.

Plus the inescapable rational authority of moral norms has a little bit more to it than just inescapable rational authority but it would have been cumbersome to put in every qualification. Straightforward inescapable rational authority requires the existence of god. However, I have never suggested that inescapable rational authority is sufficient for qualification as a moral requirement, rather it is necessary. And that's all my arguments require to establish that morality presupposes a god.
However, moral instructions seem to create reasons for compliance rather than merely be a report on reasons that are already present. And that feature is captured by making the instructor into a vengeful god.

Re 'arguments from silence'. What are you on about? My appeal is to your moral experience. Moral instructions seem to create reasons for compliance. That characteristic is matched by the instructions of a vengeful god. She, the issuer of the instruction, will harm your interests if you do not comply with that instruction. So she, the source of the instruction, is creating the reason to comply.

Re desert. you say I have failed to provide anything more than bare assertion. That's just plain untrue. First, what is it like to sense that someone deserves to come to harm? I suggest that it is as if there is some kind of external yearning for this person to come to harm. Morality, or the moral source if you prefer, wants it to happen. It is not of a piece with there being a moral obligation to create the harm, though it sometimes seems to give rise to there being a moral instruction to create it. nor, when we sense that someone deserves harm, are we sensing that harm 'will' come to this person. We are sensing an external desire or favouring of such harm.
If a vengeful god exists, and if our moral sense is roughly tracking this god's desires, then when someone does wrong- when someone fails to comply with one of her desires - we will sense that the source of morality now wishes this person to come to harm. Moral desert is not just accounted for on this view, it is positively predicted. that, frankly, is an amazing feature of this view and it should send a shiver down your spine. Bare assertion indeed!

---

So, you accept that in a world with no god and an afterlife Jack has no reason to refrain from disembowelling a prostitute.

Now, does he do anything wrong if he disembowels a prostitute?

Note what I am asking you. I am asking you if HE did anything wrong. Don't tell me he doesn't believe himself to be doing anything wrong. I am not asking you that. I am asking you if he did anything wrong.

Jack has plenty of reason to refrain from doing such. But his disorder prevents him from such control over his own actions.

Do I personally think he's doing something wrong? Well of course. That should have been obvious to you in my explanation that we generally don't go around killing each other. It would be detrimental to our survival. So again I say, FROM AND EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT, morals have utility.

You keep changing your position. Originally you said he had no reason. Now you are saying he has a reason. What reason? He doesn't give a damn about the survival of the species. What's that to him? He doesn't care. He wants to disembowel a prostitute and he's going to die very shortly. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. YOu can go on about 'the species' all you like - he doesn't care about the species.

Now, let's go back again - does he have reason not to disembowel the prostitute? (And this time do stick to one answer!)

---

Personal abhorrence?

Unfortunately there are people that are born with no conscience. We lock up those people when they harm others.

I agree with Rahul. Personal abhorrence. Why? Because experiences directly affect your body. They've measured karma in the works.

I read an article a few years back about a new field of genetic science called epigenetics. Simply put, epigenetics is the genetics of genetics. It regulates what genetic switch goes on or off.
This experiment involved cloned mice. After cloning them, the mice had the exact identical epigenome. One was put in a cage with a maternal mother, one with a neglectful mother. That was the Only difference in the mice experiences: Experience. After some time they tested the mice which had totally different epigenomes, and the mouse with the mother who was neglectful had all sorts of illness markers and physical symptoms. For one it was predisposed to high blood pressure and anxiety. What fascinates me about the implications of this is that experience alters your body. When they switched the mothers with the baby mice: the factors resolved or deteriorated.

The quality of parental care has a broad impact on mental health, including the risk for psychopathology [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Studies in the rat directly link the maternal care environment to long-term effects on neural systems that regulate stress [6], [7] emotional function[8], [9], learning and memory [10], [11], [12] and neuroplasticity [10], [13], [14], [15]. Naturally occurring variations in maternal care in the first week of life in rats are associated with changes in brain and behavior that persist until adulthood [16]. These effects are reversed by cross-fostering, [7], [9] demonstrating a causal link between maternal care and gene expression programming.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/...ndGenomics+

He doesn't have any personal abhorrence. He likes disembowelling prostitutes. It is his thing. Just as you like eating rice pudding and watching nature documentaries he likes disembowelling prostitutes. it doesn't upset him in the least. He likes it. And he's about to die. He's go nothing to lose.
Now, does he have any reason not to disembowel a prostitute?