Atheism and Ethics

[Paleophyte]

The idea that we choose our moralities and the idea that moralities are emergent properties of societies are two very different contentions.

I'd suggest that they're not so much different contentions and more competing motivations. On the one hand we have an overarching moral framework emerging from society and on the other we have a variety of personal preferences on which of those get implemented and how rigorously. This leads to the usual assortment of saints, sinners, and ordinary citizens that populates the landscape. Interestingly, both the saints and sinners deviate from the moral norm, it's just that only the sinners cause problems and sometimes need smacking down. I suspect that this variation is necessary to a healthy society so that it can properly cope with unexpected changes in circumstance. Sometimes you need that person who will literally give you the shirt of their back. Other times you need someone who has fewer qualms about doing things that the rest of us would regard as morally reprehensible. Too much variation and your society loses coherence, but too little and it's stifled by a very narrow range of thoughts and deeds.

[h311inac311]

I like this topic because I believe that moral standards can actually be fairly simple to apply.

"Treat others as you would want to be treated." If you can feel pain then you can understand why inflicting pain on someone else without a cause is bad. Because if you punch someone for a reason which doesn't make good sense then what is preventing someone else from punching you?

What about emotional pain? Should you feel comfortable bullying someone but then be upset when it happens to you?

Lying is another easy example to justify, if you lie too much then no one will trust you.

So if we don't want to watch our society descend into a chaos where people inflict pain on each other, steal from each other and lie one to another then we have every reason to live as though these virtues of fairness matter. 

It also gives us a good reason to establish a Justice system which punishes behavior that is far outside the accepted norm.

[Lucian]

I like this topic because I believe that moral standards can actually be fairly simple to apply.

"Treat others as you would want to be treated." If you can feel pain then you can understand why inflicting pain on someone else without a cause is bad. Because if you punch someone for a reason which doesn't make good sense then what is preventing someone else from punching you?

What about emotional pain? Should you feel comfortable bullying someone but then be upset when it happens to you?

Lying is another easy example to justify, if you lie too much then no one will trust you.

So if we don't want to watch our society descend into a chaos where people inflict pain on each other, steal from each other and lie one to another then we have every reason to live as though these virtues of fairness matter. 

It also gives us a good reason to establish a Justice system which punishes behavior that is far outside the accepted norm.

Thanks for the reply. 
I like this topic because it is appears simple and yet is actually quite complex. The question isn’t whether I think you have good standards there, the question is whether those standards are mind independently real. That they exist in some way and are authoritative regardless of what people think. That there is a real standard of good.
Do you think that your moral views there point to such a standard, and can you elaborate on how?

Another way to phrase this. You have given good normative ethics there, I am asking about the metaethics.

[Belacqua]

I like this topic because I believe that moral standards can actually be fairly simple to apply.

"Treat others as you would want to be treated." If you can feel pain then you can understand why inflicting pain on someone else without a cause is bad. Because if you punch someone for a reason which doesn't make good sense then what is preventing someone else from punching you?

What about emotional pain? Should you feel comfortable bullying someone but then be upset when it happens to you?

Lying is another easy example to justify, if you lie too much then no one will trust you.

So if we don't want to watch our society descend into a chaos where people inflict pain on each other, steal from each other and lie one to another then we have every reason to live as though these virtues of fairness matter. 

It also gives us a good reason to establish a Justice system which punishes behavior that is far outside the accepted norm.

The Golden Rule really is golden. Not to be forgotten. And it's often pointed out these days that most societies seem to have evolved their own version of it. 

The problem, I think, is how quickly people get away from the Golden Rule. How easy it is to justify switching it off. 

The main example I know of is the belief that how you treat me will determine how I treat you. It's very common to hear someone say that if you treat me with less than the respect I deserve (in my own opinion) then I am justified in treating you just as badly. (I have cleaned up the language here. What people really say is "If you give me shit I'll give it right back to you asshole.") This ethical belief seems to be very widely accepted, at least in America. Many people find it unquestionably justified. 

The desire seems to be that I should WIN every interaction that I enter in to. And that if the other person treats me badly, then I have lost -- lost face, or lost my self-image as a person who wins. Every movie teaches us that the hero is the one who ends the conversation with a snappy one-liner, thereby putting the enemy in his place. 

No doubt many religious people hold this belief as well. Although I would think that, ideally, if God is judging you then it doesn't mean you have maintain your superiority in the eyes of the people who are treating you badly. God will know you've been a good person, even if the people who want to belittle you feel that they've made you small. There are lots of Christian stories like this. 

Anyway, I think this kind of justification is so widespread that it forms an unspoken moral rule over-riding the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule really isn't the main way we judge any more. It switches off immediately if someone is rude to you, or stubbornly refuses to agree with you -- then you are allowed to treat them badly. Or if your social habits fall outside of the accepted social habits of the local group, then the self-appointed conformity enforcers have free rein to whip the non-conformist into shape. 

So "if you're an asshole to me I'll be an asshole to you," is an extremely common moral code. The trouble is that at the end of the day, it means that both people are assholes. 

If you refuse to be an asshole when someone treats you like an asshole you may feel that you've lost. But I think real morality doesn't switch off due to other people's behavior. Even if they show they are jerks, even if they are declaring victory and laughing as you walk out the door, it doesn't give me the right to be an asshole.

[Mister Agenda]

The Iron Rule.

[Paleophyte]

I like this topic because I believe that moral standards can actually be fairly simple to apply.

"Treat others as you would want to be treated." If you can feel pain then you can understand why inflicting pain on someone else without a cause is bad. Because if you punch someone for a reason which doesn't make good sense then what is preventing someone else from punching you?

What about emotional pain? Should you feel comfortable bullying someone but then be upset when it happens to you?

Lying is another easy example to justify, if you lie too much then no one will trust you.

So if we don't want to watch our society descend into a chaos where people inflict pain on each other, steal from each other and lie one to another then we have every reason to live as though these virtues of fairness matter. 

It also gives us a good reason to establish a Justice system which punishes behavior that is far outside the accepted norm.

The Golden Rule really is golden. Not to be forgotten. And it's often pointed out these days that most societies seem to have evolved their own version of it.

The difficulty with the Golden Rule is that the common version, cited above, isn't the best one. Just goes to show how "simple" morals are anything but.

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a good rule but it presumes that what I want done unto me is good for anybody else. It assumes a common perspective that, while largely accurate for broad strokes, can fall down when you get into the picky details. A better formulation is "Do unto others as they would have done unto them."

That said, the world would be a much better place if more people followed any version of it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Placing comity over reciprocity in the hierarchy of moral values is an option - but we shouldn't be quick to believe that it is a universally good one.

Notably, christian bigots pleaded for this as they eradicated their neighbors.

[Belacqua]

The Golden Rule really is golden. Not to be forgotten. And it's often pointed out these days that most societies seem to have evolved their own version of it.

The difficulty with the Golden Rule is that the common version, cited above, isn't the best one. Just goes to show how "simple" morals are anything but.

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you" is a good rule but it presumes that what I want done unto me is good for anybody else. It assumes a common perspective that, while largely accurate for broad strokes, can fall down when you get into the picky details. A better formulation is "Do unto others as they would have done unto them."

That said, the world would be a much better place if more people followed any version of it.

Yes, agreed. 

We have to be careful not to assume that others want what we want. And, even more so, we have to be careful that we're not just giving them what we want to give, rather than what they need. For example, it's easy and tempting to give a lecture, when what they really need is sympathy, or even just a sandwich.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wondering what people think of a simple response that the bombing in World War Two was to force Germany to surrender. The old testament wasn’t that as there seem to have been many small city states. I guess you could say that it was to force the other cities to surrender and leave the land. Not convinced with my response. Anything better?

WWII bombing was not aimed at annihilation, but OT campaigns are often exactly that, take the wimmenfolk as sex-slaves, bash out baby brains, and so on.

While WWII bombing was brutal and criminal in human terms, it was certainly well within godly terms of "this is how we deal with miscreants." Anyone pointing to human war crimes to excuse their god's own action is implicitly acknowledging that their own god's acts are indeed crimes.

[Thumpalumpacus]

But yep, I am mainly interested in the question of how we know moral facts if they are mind-independently real.

[...]

Thoughts?

How can any morality, fact or no, be conceived "mind-independently"?

If you're hiking in the Tetons and a rock falls on your head and kills you, is it guilty of murder?

Morality requires a mind. And because minds are inherently subjective, it follows that there are no moral facts, only opinions.