Agnostic Mom

43 Comments »

1. Noell:
   May 19th, 2006 @ 5:31 pm

   Hifi–I finally read your article after writing this post. I think there are two major differences between us, but otherwise our views are remarkably similar (at least I was surprised at how similar when I read your article).

   Mainly, I think we are working from different definitions. Once we get past the difference of definitions, do you agree that we have a very similar stance?

   The other difference is in our approach. I tend to look for commonalities with the mainstream public so that I can build on that, changing definitions and paradigms gradually. Your approach is more about fighting for our rights now, and then once we’ve managed to earn them, for example, through the courts, mainstream paradigms will then shift naturally.

   Therefore, I want to continue discussing morality by changing its meaning. You don’t. It’s interesting. I don’t know if either of us has a more effective approach or not. I just know that I have found some success with my approach so far (as I know you have with yours) and I don’t know if I want to change it. Maybe the diversity of approaches is good, anyway.

   Now that I’ve broken down my own definitions, viewpoints, and paradigms in this post, what do you think?

   I thought your article was excellent. Some points were completely new to me. I have a completely new reference through which to understand a lot of things. I plan to read the article again.

2. fran:
   May 19th, 2006 @ 6:34 pm

   Laws are passed everyday. Some are so trivial they aggravate the judges who have to rule on the credibility of such nonsense . Certain segments of society feel as though it is there duty to augment laws that the rest of us will be stuck with until we challenge the validity of such laws on appeal. Many times the segment of society that enacts the laws know darn well they will never stand the test of time in the legal system , but they get a charge out of it anyway. Pat Robertson is such a person. He will knowingly launch a movement knowing there is little chance for success . He does it because it’s popular with his constituancy. That has been the reasoning behind the conservative movement. Who cares about the rationale . We are desperate for power . Morality is a powerful political tool.

3. Noell:
   May 19th, 2006 @ 6:36 pm

   Fran–they also do it to generate energy from the base. They do it to create a non-existent battle between good and evil. And they do it to get their constuency out to vote. Many may not have gone out to vote for Bush except that there were votes regarding marriage that brought them out.

4. Holly:
   May 19th, 2006 @ 7:12 pm

   I’m going to try to simplify this whole discussion:
   As a Humanist I actually look to Hillel’s formulation of the golden rule as a simple, one-line, catch-all for morality. As the story goes, a man went to Hillel and told him he would convert if Hillel told him the entire Torah while he stood on one foot. Hillel said:
   “That which is despicable to you, do not do to others, that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary..”
   I like it, it’s simple, it’s sort of a passive golden rule (you don’t have to do good works, just don’t annoy anyone else).

   It’s based on empathy.. a universal human trait that evolved to allow us to live together as social animals.

   And if you have to explain your moral beliefs to someone, you can do it while you (or they) stand on one foot.

5. fran:
   May 20th, 2006 @ 4:32 am

   That’s always been my standard and it works well. What remains is yadda yadda yadda to me. Much ado about nothing!!

6. Hifi:
   May 23rd, 2006 @ 5:35 pm

   Noell-
   If your agenda is to change the meaning of the word “morality” for religious people, I cannot see that ever happening. I am curious about what your successes are. The Brights looked into an action like this and it went down in flames. It just doesn’t make sense to compete with these on their home field – not in the public arena. To claim that as an agnostic you can have morality, too, just proves them right – that we don’t deserve any respect.

   I am afraid your basis for right and wrong is too limited to be realistic: “It is immoral to cause unnecessary pain and suffering in the world.” You see, right there you neglect to deal with 90% of the problem – the necessary pain and suffering. After all, what are local economic and armed conflicts all about? What are regional economic and military conflicts all about? (Hint: population and resources.) In all honesty, unless your plan includes population control and some kind of communist global resource distribution plan, I’m hard pressed to see it solving anything except making you feel better about yourself.

   Beyond imperialism and the class stratification ills of the world, most human suffering is caused by natural plagues and catastrophes – warding those off is what ever gave any weight to ideas of good vs. evil. That is why “evil” is a term full of with supernatural association (synonyms – sinful and wicked). Now, unless you have some kind of priestly power you haven’t told us about to ward those off plagues, claiming naturalistic moral goodness we literally don’t have a prayer in the debate. Because religious people do have the magical solution. Prayer, talismans, idols, altars, totems, charms, blessings… what do think these signs of good are for? For one, religious morality is very much involved with keeping the natural under control. For another, all of these signs denote who is good – and by exclusion who is not.

   And let’s not forget if morality is about anything, it is about under what circumstances who can and who cannot have sexual relations – the rights and responsibilities involved (e.g. pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, adultery, perversion, pornography, etc). These are the hot “moral issues” in the West most likely to end in an accusation of atheistic amorality. These topics are used by the political right to browbeat religious support and defame opponents. It is relevant that there is hardly any cross-cultural significance or definition to these issues. Next on the morality hit list might be who you can kill and who you cannot (hardly any cross-cultural agreement there either).

   Curiously absent in the modern West, however, is any moral incrimination heard over property and personal rights vs. community needs. When there is, “atheist Communist”, is usually sufficient to derail it – but moral concepts like greed, charity, gluttony are rarely invoked. When is the last time you heard a moral controversy over amassing undeserved wealth?

   ——
   I’d also like to put to rest this whole idea of some kind of universal foundation. As I have said before, the only universals are survival, reproduction and “everyone else is wrong. (If you’re following along, you’ll notice that these are the causes of suffering not only

   Here are a couple of examples I’ve taken the time to deconstruct – I think they are what most people would expect we could use as “moral” benchmarks.

   The Golden Rule. About the only principle you can find which is trumpeted by all of the varieties of character education (CE), this widely acclaimed moral homily is a wonderful example of the problem of contextual vacancy with the CE industry.

   First, consider if the *reasons* for following the Golden Rule in any given situation are actually valid? For instance:
   * What if the other person doesn’t also follow it?
   * What if how you like things done to you is offensive in manner and result to others when done to them? (Ugly American syndrome is one example).
   * What if more than one other is involved and their goals are in conflict?
   * What if you both want things that will hurt you?
   * Does following this principle lead to success, self-esteem, less abuse, less poverty, greater rights for all, a better environment?
   * Which of the goals just listed does the Golden Rule achieve more effectively than alternatives: e.g., straight reciprocity (tit for tat); or the communist rule, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”; or plain old manipulation via marketing, selling, framing, half-truth and other widely regarded political and commercial means of manipulating others for one’s own and even for their own “benefit”?

   One more. “Don’t kill” would seem to be a universal moral and not being a killer a universal moral good? Well… You mean, unless it is in self-defense or defense of another? Unless you are instructed to do so by the state (war)? Unless you are the police? Unless you are crazy? Unless you are under emotional duress? Unless the victim is: a witch, or was convicted of a capital crime, or has asked for euthanasia? Or is an animal or a plant, or an embryo or yourself? Unless, unless, unless… You see the problem and that is only within Western culture (i.e., what if you are an aborigine and it is a matter of initiation and honor to prove your self in war games – although any death must be compensated by half your family’s wealth – which everyone agrees is completely honorable)?

   In fact, no such simple dictum against killing – especially as applies to the out-group – has ever been carried out in local practice without contradiction and, most especially, not in some abstract, global way.

   ——

   As far as all this with regard to raising children without religion, please read what I have written about chararcter education (3 pages) on my site.

   No one ever answered my previous question: Do you think their is something inherently wrong with your children – do they need moral education, or not? Look at it this way, if such a thing as morality is natural – not merely a conceit of religion or rulers – then children are fine as they are. They will cause suffering or not follow the local social rules equal to the most ethically astute of us placed in an equally unfair or demanding situation.

   An interesting corollary of that would be that efforts to teach morality to children would work only to pervert their natural morality. To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching: “The morality that can be told is not the natural morality.”

   This isn’t a hypothetical issue. I have children and this is my current approach:

   Theory – Enlightened self-interest: Critical thinking. Systems (wide context and deep repercussion). Evolution. Anthropology. Ecology. History. Physiology/Health/Nutrition.

   This should empower them to make whatever choices they need to make for themselves and their world.

   Practice, I use these little axioms: Make friends. Being a hypocrite will come back to you. Promote civil liberties. Question authority. Disregard victimless crimes. Conformity is easy and the internal/external rewards guaranteed, but meager. Following your dreams is hard and the internal/external rewards great, despite the risk.

   Bottom-line: Never invoke an abstract “should”. Ignore all broad behavioral injunctions (something that in conventional codes of morality aborts all insight and possibilities). Children should be shown the plain reality of choices and the trade-offs – social, material and existential – incumbent in making them.

7. Hifi:
   May 23rd, 2006 @ 5:51 pm

   For fun, I have wrote up some practical definitions of morality.

   Morality:
   1. An obsolete, psuedo-metaphysical social construct – lacking scientific verifiability.

   2. The cloak worn of hypocrites, who act selfishly, locally, and for the short-term, while wishing others to act in just the opposite manner where they are concerned.

   3. A weapon of conservative elements in society used in the attempt to impose supernaturalism, authority and conformity on individuals within, to persecute non-conforming individuals within, and to demonize cultures without who have different sensibilities, social structures, histories and economies.

   4. A loosely wielded, meaningless criticism of insufficiency employed by conservatives and theists to evoke a reaction in unconfident progressives and atheists in order to lure them into an untenable frame and trap – too often successfully inducing them into wasting their time and efforts, which otherwise might be applied more productively to extend civil liberties in government and support laws that would actually help their cause.

   After all, “the kind, peaceful people died out long ago when the other guys came over and took their food and women without a fight”. This is according to my axiom of morality: “treat one’s own group with loving care, and exploit the bloody hell out of others.”

   That sums up in a cute example the need for any humanistic “plan” to first address the in-group/out-group issues of local survival and reproduction, that pit human genetic and cultural groups against each other. Certainly, ridding the world of the religious haze that directly incites conflict while it works against seeing the situation clearly would help tremendously.

8. Ron:
   May 24th, 2006 @ 8:42 am

   Without qualifying ‘unnecessary’, or ‘pain and suffering’ : it doesn’t work.
   It DOES go in the right direction sometimes (probably more often than not), like you say, but as a rule – it doesn’t work.

   Being alive increases the pain and suffering in the world (including – as an aside- the pain and suffering of physical birth most women of the world experience – maybe this is the ‘agnostic morality’ version of original sin?).

   The methods we use to survive decrease the opportunities of others to survive – expend resources others want/need – making all of those born after or before us suffer similarly.
   I’m just talking about walking about, breathing, eating and drinking – - all the other things we do that make life worse for others are just icing on the cake.

   I think HiFi has got a clear-cut argument for a better system. I’d very much like to hear you address the specifics of his outline for teaching our children, because I can’t imagine a way in which your description of good and bad would be a preferable approach.

   Ultimately, the description you provide does not approach a system for non-deist morality, it gives guidelines for rationalizing supernatural language.
   I see think what you mean, though, and for many of our day to day situations – you describe a way to help make less irresponsible choices.

   I’m interested to hear how you rationalize slave labor as something that isn’t wrong (by your definition) – and child labor at that! You may have a hard time convincing me – I’m still confused about your not believing chickens feel pain or care for others of their own kind.

9. Noell:
   May 24th, 2006 @ 12:20 pm

   Let me just respond to a few points right away, but I need more time to before I get to everything as a whole.

   Ron-I do not rationalize slave labor as something that isn’t wrong. By my definition it is wrong. It is not necessary. It is cheap and it happens not because American consumers and economy rely on it, but because a few amass great wealth for it and we (American consumers) are caught in the system. If we could convince countries who legalize it to ban it, and if we could convict those who do it illegally, things would equal out. Jobless adults in those countries would be able to get jobs. Their middle class would grow, and this would stimulate their economy.

   American companies would have turn back (to a degtree) to Americans for manufacturing. Prices would go up in the short run, but more Americans would find more jobs and in the long run, the economy would eventually stabilize again.

   All the examples that you have given as “necessary evils”: I do not believe they are necessary. BTW, I did give a short response to your last comment on the “System For Morality” post, Ron, just in case you didn’t see it.

   We need to eradicate all of these practices: child lavor, slavery, honor killing, genital mutilation, etc. But my point was NOT that I rationalize them. My point is that these things take time to make happen.

   My point is that Ron in Pennsylvania and Noell in Arizona have very little power against these things. At least not as indiviuals. We have to keep living our lives, and while we do, we can be advancing the cause of reason and equity. We can enlighten others about the sources of their beloved material wealth. We can demand our governments work to change the system. We can fund organizations who do.

   To me, this is what Humanism means: we can’t sit around hoping for a god and an afterlife to make it all better. We have reason, we have science, we have empathy (which allows us to acknowledge others’ pain). In other words, we have the ability to fix these problems. And we have made great strides foward in the last few hundred years. As technology continues to improve at a faster and faster pace, our ability to make global changes is also accelerating.

   Hifi–I love the description of your approach with your children. I can see its benefits in multiple ways and I will be putting a LOT of thought into it.

   I don’t understand, though, why you don’t think that an axiom that instructs children to “promote civil liberties” isn’t a moral code. Sounds like morality to me.

   Even the quote you used about natural morality was a reference to morality as an acceptable and secular idea. Not everybody sees morality the ways you describe it. I will put more time into the topic of how other secularists define morality. I have heard a number of Evolutionary Psychologists refer to morality. I am wondering if this is the difference in our paradigms: I come from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology. I know Gregg100 has studied it. Have either of you (Hifi and Ron) studied it?

   I don’t understand why you don’t see a need to teach our children that while they are exercising their self-interests, it is moral to make sure they are not hurting others in the process (for examples, spreading untrue rumors about another peer, lying to get an innocent peer in trouble in order to avoid getting in trouble yourself, etc.) This are what I consider morality.

   I am not alone in referring to morality that way either. Again, I am going to take more time on this point and get back to you.

   Ron–how is it not non-deist to base morality on the most basic concepts that: (1)We exist (2)We can feel pain (3)We have empathy, meaning we can acknowledge others’ pain (4)We can make choices that avoid causing others pain.

   Where is the deism in that? I think it is quite existential.

   Okay, guys, this is a start. I need to attend to my kids. And I need to sit down and look at your comments point by point. I’ve been responding to your comments hit-and-miss and spontaneously, which I know must be frustrating to you.

   I need to take more time to look at each point in a more thoughtful manner. I also need to take more time to write in a way where I am communicating more effectively.

10. Hifi:
    May 24th, 2006 @ 5:28 pm

    Noell – Telling your children to promote civil liberties is like telling the city to put up a traffic light and enforce a law about it. There is nothing moral about it, nothing altruistic, it is self-interest, pure and simple to want a system in place whereby one is not at risk of being run down. Like feeding oneself. As for the Taoist rephrase, the point is whatever you can think of as morality, is not moral. It is folly to think in those terms.

    I argued the Golden Rule and killing. Do I have to be the one to go through the same exercise on your other practices in need of eradiction? So universally condemned that there aren’t even laws, religious or civic, against them? In fact, fixing the problem for others who didn’t ask for it can be seen as pretentious patronization – imperialist (when foreign) or class (when domestic). Again, I have to question the perspecitive of these priorities, with millions dying daily of hunger and disease, you are worrying about children earing enough to feed themselves and in many cases their entire families?

    I am familiar with Evolutionary Psychology – mostly all theory and no substance. I particularly think that M. Shermer is off the mark – as much tactically as tecnically. My background is cultural anthropology so I know what they try to base their claims on.

    As for what’s wrong with saying to our children “It is not moral to….” I shudder at ever hearing those words uttered in our home. Why not? For one, where are the reasons? It is very telling that one NEVER hears any reasons given when this kind of line is taken. Even, “it will make others feel bad and you wouldn’t want others to make you feel bad…” I think I’ve already demolished as a good enough reason to generally apply any “should” in a unique situation. Why take the short-cut? Why not think, when one can instead think through the pros and cons and use that as a basis for action, instead.

    And more basically, why do you assume the problem is with the kids and not the situation or system? I find no reason to believe that “spreading untrue rumors about another peer, lying to get an innocent peer in trouble in order to avoid getting in trouble yourself” is not an instinctively correct choice in circumstances where children find it necessary. It’s natural survival – sometimes for the common welfare, sometimes in conflict with it.

    (I hope you all can take time to read my character education articles soon, so I don’t have to load up these comments with excerpts from them.)

    “Lessons on [flaws in the structure of society] would include demonstrating how improving social conditions eliminates the causes of inequities and injustices that produce social discontinuity and how equal opportunity and the common welfare promotes cooperation and sense of community. Under these social conditions the need to make personal choices so “strategic” is automatically reduced.

    Indeed, without adding fundamental pillars of equality and mutuality (fraternity), the other pillars become altruistic, utopian and dangerous. Confronted with imbalances of power and opportunity, the effective defense – besides trying to work within the system to change them (as we are here) – is to respond with equally unfair behavior. Choices people make are not about right and wrong; they are practical. A simple demonstration is that when the economy is good, crime goes down. On the other hand, if people are poor, marginalized and not integrated in society, you get riots. No morality involved, one way or the other, thank you. Unfortunately, as things stand right now, in America, practical is pretty ugly.

    In order to bring students’ attention to dysfunctional structures of society, they can be encouraged to research the roots of social dissonance, explore the basis of socio-economic conditions and contemplate how to correct and improve them. In today’s America, where the system is still too obviously rigged, it will seem in many ways “fairer” to cheat, lie and pilfer; indulge greed and pride; use money, anabolic drugs, or cronyism to get ahead – instead of merit; avoid intellectual honesty like a plague; use marketing manipulation to make your point, and finally, decide who is right by who is the strongest…”

11. Noell:
    May 25th, 2006 @ 7:29 am

    Ron–On chickens:

    Neurological sources for pain are not inherent in every creature (as if God created it in all of us?) but evolved. Some creatures have a limited capacity for it, some have a huge capacity, and some may have no capacity.

    Likewise, emotional attachment to others was also an evolutionary adaptation and not every creature had an environmental need to develop it.

12. Noell:
    May 25th, 2006 @ 8:12 am

    Hifi, I have almost no sit-down time today and tomorrow. I will give you a response (which is also the response Ron is waiting for ) as soon as I can.

13. fran:
    May 25th, 2006 @ 7:27 pm

    Even though Rajneesh was convinced that with the help of scientists and others he could create a self supporting ranch on barren wasteland that could produce enough food and be made habitable without relying on all of the energy resources we rely on today the christians defiled and criticized him. He was aware that there had to be trading going on with local merchants . Rather than compete with the massive oregonian christian population he wanted to get along and trade with them.That wasn’t to be because they feared he was out to turn their children away from religion so they made things up by saying the ranch was nothing but an orgy city where people constantly had sex with each other and violated all of the laws of god and rules of morality he (pretend god ) had laid down for each of us . It was funny . They ( the christians ) sent buses into the village to “rescue ” us . No one wanted to be rescued but when the buses returned to Portland they said that there were always keepers watching our every move and everyone was afraid to board. That was simply not true. The Christians immediately organized and hired planes to fly over and drop leaflets . It was surreal. Why am I writing this you may ask , well it’s all interspersed with the morality concept . It’s just an example of Hi fi’s breakdown of definition’s of morality. They desparately wanted us out of there so that there propaganda regarding god’s, ghosts, and spirits of supernaturalism would again reign supreme Scientific principles were being put to the test . Deer were walking alongside of you down the road Birds were reclaiming the land . We had greenery growing there . On barren wasteland!! It broke my heart when we had to leave . I was learning so much.

14. Ron:
    May 26th, 2006 @ 7:16 am

    I didn’t give a list of necessary evils for you to disagree with – so I’m not sure what you are referring to.
    When I say slavery etc. are pervasive problems that people accept without a second thought – I’m not saying that makes the problems necessary.
    Having a system declaring universal good and evil makes the problems harder to change – as one quickly becomes overwhelmed with the horrors of the world when they realize nature doesn’t play by these man-made rules. The overwhelmed are more likely to respond as you did “Noell in Arizona and Ron in Pennsylvania can’t change these things” – which implies that we have no choice but to continue supporting them (knowing the support of these atrocities is the only thing maintaining them). Individuals do make a difference – especially when their example spreads through others – I think the approach of “I can’t change it – so I’ll accept it” is a destructive example to children. Humanity is made of individuals.

    I don’t make my own clothes (or, as would also usually be called for, my own cloth with which to make the clothes) – but I don’t call the slavery wrong/bad/evil either. I recognize it as something that should ideally be changed – something I’m against (”what goes around comes around” works better than the golden rule) – and something I make strides toward personally affecting by increasing my awareness of who I give my money to. Adhering to a transcendent set of descriptions good/bad/wrong/evil – encourages surrender to black and white and ignores the process of making something a lighter shade of grey. It makes everyone look at you cockeyed for suggesting their most basic choices are something that require more scrutiny.

    There is no true black or white – there is no true good or evil. There are (maddeningly) complex shades between.

    Your response “regarding chickens” is a broad statement that doesn’t refer to chickens – it refers to ’some creatures’. Chickens feel pain, and have communal living in their life cycle which necessitates interrelationships that affect survival (these relationships are the stimulus for cooperational and sympathetic consideration).

    The human empathy you refer to is factually impossible – the best we can ever do is have sympathy, as we can never be in another’s exact position. If we could have true empathy – your morality system may work, but diversity of experience can not be overcome (nor would we want it to be).

    How does a concept of right and wrong stink of deism? Where do your ideas of right and wrong come from? If from personal experience alone (hard for the very wisest among us) it is still a projection of that experience onto others when you state that good and bad transcend personal opinion. What gives us the right to project our views of good and evil? This is a declaration that emotions are scientifically verifiable as specific natural laws. So they are being declared as a law passed down from nature. Regarding two key examples – abuse of children, necessities of pain and suffering – nature contains unlimited examples of these being a part of living. Nature/science isn’t the origin of these emotions – our thinking is. Our individual, diverse thinking. And by ‘us’ I am not limiting thinking to humanity – all thinking creatures with their personal preferences.

    Its like empathy. There is no such thing. Opinions of right and wrong are in the individual. I have no doubt that we are splitting hairs while saying nearly the same things – but I also have no doubt that adhering to a system of morality defined by projections of good and bad can not be an effective approach – it is the approach that created the quagmire of religion.

    I have not read much on evolutionary psychology – but knowing how much the science of psychology itself is in its infancy – I can’t imagine that the study of changing psychology through our evolutionary predecessors is very dependable as of today. I’m sure its very interesting though – and I do wish to learn more about it.

15. Noell:
    May 28th, 2006 @ 2:48 pm

    Hifi- Finally I am responding to your last comment. I will italicize your statements and put them in quotes. Then you can read my response. (Ron-some of these answers also answer your comment. But I will do the same thing with whatever is leftover in your comment).

    “I argued the Golden Rule and killing. Do I have to be the one to go through the same exercise on your other practices in need of eradiction?”

    I didn’t know what the point was of your arguing both these topics because I purposely did not use them as examples for the very same reasons. You set up two straw men. You actually ignored the examples I did use of unequivocal wrongs: violence against children and rape. I am curious to see how you would argue that humans cannot use their reason to distinguish those as conclusively wrong.

    You might argue that there is an appropriate time for violence against children in primitive societies where they toughen them through initiations and such in preparation for a harsh, violent, and competitive environment. But it is that violent environment which is unnecessary, and removing the need for violence and competition among tribes eliminates the need for such harsh toughening.

    Which brings us back to this point that violence against children is wrong. The reason for changing that system, which is to decrease instances of that violence, is because it is wrong. And it’s not just because you, yourself, don’t want others to be violent against your children (the self-interest aspect which you only acknowledge), but because of empathy: you also (I hope) cringe and feel an amount of pain at the thought of violence against ANY child. This is MY point: Evolution endowed humans with Empathy, Reason, and a Moral Sense (The moral sense came before religion. Religion just hijacked and twisted it). Because humans have these qualities, we can conclude that causing another person unnecessary pain is wrong.

    “So universally condemned that there aren’t even laws, religious or civic, against them?”

    Are you referring to my query about day-to-day instances where we choose actions that hurt others? If so, then yes I still say these are relevant issues for our children. But I am not laying any claims that specific those specific issues are “universally condemned.” My point is that as creatures who have the ability to recognize how our actions effect others, how we can choose to cause or not cause people pain, and as creatures who have the ability to reason, we can evaluate our options. And we can find actions that don’t hurt others without constantly subverting our own self-interests.

    “In fact, fixing the problem for others who didn’t ask for it can be seen as pretentious patronization – imperialist (when foreign) or class (when domestic). Again, I have to question the perspecitive of these priorities, with millions dying daily of hunger and disease, you are worrying about children earing enough to feed themselves and in many cases their entire families?”

    Hifi, where do you get the idea that I prioritize eliminating child labor over hunger and disease? Why in the world would you get that idea? Number one, I was responding to a specific query from Ron. I never said anything was a priority over something else. I have not addressed any one issue as being more important, urgent, or necessary over another. He asked me about child slave labor and I answered.

    More important than that, we were talking about child slavery! Not the willing labor of children who are helping their families. And yes, I DO include the slavery of children as a wretched evil that needs to be eradicated. The owners in the culture may not want our involvement in eliminating slavery, but those children but to conclude that the children don’t want out of the situation is ignorance of human nature.

    The same goes for rape against women. I better not hear any man tell me that it is “patronizing” and “imperialistic” (as you put it) to want to help women in cultures where rape is acceptable. Women do not want to be raped.

    “I am familiar with Evolutionary Psychology – mostly all theory and no substance. I particularly think that M. Shermer is off the mark – as much tactically as tecnically. My background is cultural anthropology so I know what they try to base their claims on.”

    I am not aware of Michael Shermer having any opinions of Evolutionary Psychology. Your response leads me to think that you are more unfamiliar with it than familiar. Shermer, if he does discuss Evolutionary Psychology, is hardly the person to associate with it. Your comment about him seems to imply that it is his own theory, or that he is a leader in the field. In actuality, it is a huge field of research, Richard Dawkins being one of its many key scientists. I’d list a bunch others, but I don’t know how familiar you are with various scientists. I don’t know how many you would recognize.

    So, is it, as you claimed, “mostly all theory and no substance?” This is what it really is: “a multidisciplinary integrative research framework within which cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, cultural anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, paleoanthropologists, hunter-gatherer researchers, primatologists, developmental psychologists, social psychologists, behavioral ecologists, and others are communicating and collaborating . . .” (from the Center For Evolutionary Psychology).

    Research approaches include: Laboratory-based cognitive experimentation, Field studies of tribal and foraging peoples, Psychophysiology, Cross-cultural experimentation and observation, Cognitive neuroscience, Social psychological and survey methods, Developmental studies, Theoretical biology, Hunter-gatherer archaeology.

    That is hardly what I would call all theory and no substance. In fact, based on many of our previous discussions on AgnosticMom, I conclude that both you and (especially) Ron both hold theories or “beliefs” that are actually theories of Evolutionary Psychology and you just don’t realize it. As an example the idea of the “god-gene,” or a number of genes that combine to give us a tendency to believe in gods, is a theory of that field that you may subscribe to. If you don’t agree with that one, I am sure there are others, such as the origins of altruism and tit-for-tat.

    I could cites works and references for days and days about how this field of research is taking over the old, pre-darwinian ways of thinking. I will stop now and save them for future blog entries.

    “As for what’s wrong with saying to our children “It is not moral to….” I shudder at ever hearing those words uttered in our home.”

    I wouldn’t use that phrase either. While I haven’t discounted the word, “moral” altogether, as you have, I never advocated telling kids what is and isn’t moral. The purpose of my system for morality was to avoid that. I want to give them a system, or a couple of questions, that they can use to reason it out themselves. I don’t know how many different ways I need to re-explain this.

    I keep saying over and over that I do not think we should give the kids a list of do’s and don’ts. I keep saying again and again that I don’t think we should say certain “character” qualities, such as honesty, are good or bad. But you keep coming at me as if AM advocating those things.

    Like you, I AM advocating we teach our children to evaluate their situations (situational ethics) to make their choices. I also feel that the person’s own pain and happiness comes into play first when considering the overall effects of pain.

    So that is not where we are different. Where we are different is whether there is any reason to make a choice based on how it effects other people. You mischaracterize that idea by suggesting I advocate admonitions such as:

    “it will make others feel bad and you wouldn’t want others to make you feel bad…”

    Again, your above statement does not in anyway characterize my system for morality. That does not accurately answer the question of whether an action increases unnecessary pain. Hurting someone’s feelings can at times be very helpful. Not only that, but once again, that statement is an example of a parent telling their child what is right or wrong, rather than helping them come to the conclusion them selves.

    Moving on, you asked:
    “why do you assume the problem is with the kids and not the situation or system? I find no reason to believe that “spreading untrue rumors about another peer, lying to get an innocent peer in trouble in order to avoid getting in trouble yourself” is not an instinctively correct choice in circumstances where children find it necessary. It’s natural survival – sometimes for the common welfare, sometimes in conflict with it.”

    Let me start with the first part of that paragraph: It is similar to your earlier question (which I forgot to answer) of whether I view children as good or bad. My answer is neither. We are a product of evolutionary forces, or a product of nature. Nature is not moral or immoral. It just is. The same goes for us, children, and human nature.

    Morality comes into play where we, with all of our amoral instincts of physical and social survival, associate in communities. The problem is the mere fact that sometimes our own self-interests (which are amoral) competes with other people’s self-interests. It is in that interaction that morality comes into existence. And as interaction with others is a part of humanity, we evolved a moral sense.

    Religion and the self-interest-driven need of some to exert authorities over others hijacked morality and twisted it into an arbitrary list of rights and wrongs, do’s and don’ts. When I wrote in my post how I define “good” and “bad” I was deconstructing what religion made of those concepts.

    “Lessons on [flaws in the structure of society] would include demonstrating how improving social conditions eliminates the causes of inequities and injustices that produce social discontinuity and how equal opportunity and the common welfare promotes cooperation and sense of community. Under these social conditions the need to make personal choices so “strategic” is automatically reduced.”

    Notice you used the word, “reduced.” Fixing the social structure wouldn’t actually eliminate the need, would it? The idea that we could ever get to that state is naive. Our own self-interests will prevent it, as they always have in the past. And even if we were able to, there will always be those whose greed and ambitions will topple it right back down again. If all things were equal, there will always be those who want to have more, and have better, than the others. And they will find their way to make that happen.

    “Confronted with imbalances of power and opportunity, the effective defense – besides trying to work within the system to change them (as we are here) – is to respond with equally unfair behavior. Choices people make are not about right and wrong; they are practical. A simple demonstration is that when the economy is good, crime goes down. On the other hand, if people are poor, marginalized and not integrated in society, you get riots. No morality involved, one way or the other, thank you.”

    I agree with you that changing the system/structure will answer a mountain of these problems. I am with you on that. But you are wrong to make it the exclusive answer and ignore the concept of morality. By reducing it 100% to the situation, you close your eyes to the fact that many of those poor and marginalized people DON’T commit crimes or participate in riots. You are ignoring the fact that, while much of what we do is instinctual, (so instinctual that we don’t even recognize it as instinct) we ALSO have the ability to stop and make a less harmful choice. As many of us do.

    Which leads me to my other point of morality. Morality is part nature, part nurture. We have it instinctually in different amounts. I read somewhere that sociopaths do not have it all, and that is the problem we face with them. The rest of morality is nurture. Meaning, as parents, we can help increase the moral instinct of our children. We can do that, not by giving them a list of rules (as religions do) but by helping them to acknowledge the pain of others and giving them a way to evaluate it.

16. Noell:
    May 28th, 2006 @ 4:48 pm

    Ron- Here is my response to your last comment. It will be more clear if you read my response to Hifi first.

    “I didn’t give a list of necessary evils for you to disagree with – so I’m not sure what you are referring to.”

    You did give me a list of difficult scenarios regarding our consumerism, where our products come from, and how they cause pain to others. I guess I thought you were calling them necessary evils?

    “When I say slavery etc. are pervasive problems that people accept without a second thought – I’m not saying that makes the problems necessary.”

    Yes. I see that now. But how can you say people accept them without a second thought? In my experience, people don’t know about it. And if they hear it, they have a hard time believing it. And if they believe it, they are horrified and enter into a dilemma of what to do about the situation. I disagree with you that they accept it.

    “Having a system declaring universal good and evil makes the problems harder to change – as one quickly becomes overwhelmed with the horrors of the world when they realize nature doesn’t play by these man-made rules. The overwhelmed are more likely to respond as you did “Noell in Arizona and Ron in Pennsylvania can’t change these things” – which implies that we have no choice but to continue supporting them (knowing the support of these atrocities is the only thing maintaining them). Individuals do make a difference – especially when their example spreads through others – I think the approach of “I can’t change it – so I’ll accept it” is a destructive example to children. Humanity is made of individuals.”

    Ron, I don’t think your above statement is logically consistent. How does calling the problems “universally evil” overwhelm someone into inaction, while calling them “atrocities,” as you did’ and not overwhelm someone? Calling it one or the other doesn’t make it overwhelming or not overwhelming. It doesn’t make a difference whether you think they are universally bad or not.

    And I didn’t say I would accept the situation. I was stating a fact that you admit below when you said you buy clothes: that we are in a society where we have to support some of those destructive institutions some of the time. In the meantime, we do what we can to change it.

    “I don’t make my own clothes (or, as would also usually be called for, my own cloth with which to make the clothes) – but I don’t call the slavery wrong/bad/evil either. I recognize it as something that should ideally be changed – something I’m against”

    In the above 2 paragraphs you implied that I am not against slavery because I am overwhelmed by my idea that it is evil, or that a person who thinks it is evil must not be against it because they are overwhelmed. That is wrong. On both sides of the fence, whether we think it is evil or just “should ideally be changed” (which implies a morality) are those of us who who are against it.

    “I don’t make my own clothes (or, as would also usually be called for, my own cloth with which to make the clothes) – but I don’t call the slavery wrong/bad/evil either. I recognize it as something that should ideally be changed – something I’m against (”what goes around comes around” works better than the golden rule)”

    You’re saying that the idea that “what goes around comes around” is adequate motivation to be against slavery? How many of us in America actually think that slavery could “come around” to us as a result of buying the products of slaves? So far it hasn’t come around to the millions who have been doing it for decades. This is a perfect example of where your paradigm breaks down. Slavery is never going to “come around” to me nor my children. Especially not as a result of my consumption. The only way that were to be so is through some mystical force of supernaturalism that caused that to happen. But we’re not into supernaturalism here, are we?

    I just don’t buy into your statement that you are against slavery because “what goes around comes around.” I think you are against slavery because the instinctive moral sense within you, provided by evolution itself, makes you acknowledge that slavery is a violation against a person and is wrong.

    “Adhering to a transcendent set of descriptions good/bad/wrong/evil – encourages surrender to black and white and ignores the process of making something a lighter shade of grey.”

    Did I say the word “transcendent?” That was your assumption, which is causing you and Hifi to misunderstand me on multiple levels. It is both instinctive and man-made: instinctive in that we evolved a moral sense because of the other evolved perceptions of fairness and equality and because of evolved traits such as reason and empathy. Again, it is man-made because of reason. Also, my system revolves around causing others pain, not around good/bad/wrong/evil.

    And it does NOT render to black and white. The only black and whites are the few examples that are clear and obvious to be causing unnecessary pain: violence against children, rape, slavery. Certain circumstance for murder (but NOT ALL) could be included, those circumstances being where a person does it to get gain. Murder is grey when it comes to war, the death penalty, self-defense, etc.

    “There is no true black or white – there is no true good or evil. There are (maddeningly) complex shades between.”

    Not true: The world is almost completely a complex shades of grey, while there is a small handful of black-and-whites. Having a system to gauge morality to the best of your ability helps us with the shades of grey. I never said it would give us all the correct answers. I said it would help us with the answers, which in turn, increases overall happiness and decreases overall pain.

    “Your response “regarding chickens” is a broad statement that doesn’t refer to chickens – it refers to ’some creatures’. Chickens feel pain, and have communal living in their life cycle which necessitates interrelationships that affect survival (these relationships are the stimulus for cooperational and sympathetic consideration).”

    I have read that it refers also to chickens. And I didn’t say chickens were on the no-pain end of the spectrum. There is a spectrum of the amount of pain a creature has the capacity to feel. I am confident that chickens feel some level of pain. But I have read that current studies indicate that chickens have a very low pain factor. Likewise, communal living among species does not indicate emotional relationships. Bees and ants are extremely communal. They (and the chickens) seem to not feel emotional distress when one is gone.

    But let me remind you, as I said originally: I am not claiming the accuracy of this idea. I was just trying to give an example of how one person might go about answering for themselves whether an action (eating chicken) was moral. Frankly, it’s a stupid example and I used it only because it was on my mind. Let me also remind you that we will often come up with different answers. As you said, these are grey areas and I think every person should answer for themselves.

    “The human empathy you refer to is factually impossible – the best we can ever do is have sympathy, as we can never be in another’s exact position. If we could have true empathy – your morality system may work, but diversity of experience can not be overcome (nor would we want it to be).”

    Empathy is not impossible. Your definition of it is impossible. And your definition is wrong. REAL empathy, with its real definition, is in fact a part of us. Dictionary.com says that empathy is “Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.”

    It is not about being in their exact position. It is about identifying and understanding it. The more empathy a person has, the better they are at imagining another person’s pain more accurately. We do not all have the same amount of empathy.

    The reasons movies are so effective is because we can identify with the characters and what they are feeling.

    Sympathy is inferior to empathy in terms of helping others. It keeps you at a different level than the person you are trying to identify with. Having empathy DOES make the system work because empathy is not about the specific situation. Empathy is about how the various situations make a person feel inside. And all humans are able to feel the same types of emotions and physical pain.

    When I watch Big Love (the polygamy show) I empathize with the characters. I can imagine what it must feel to realize the first wife is the favorite. I have never been in that situation. But I know what love is and I know what jealousy is. I know what loneliness is.

    “How does a concept of right and wrong stink of deism? Where do your ideas of right and wrong come from? If from personal experience alone (hard for the very wisest among us) it is still a projection of that experience onto others when you state that good and bad transcend personal opinion.”

    No, it is not from personal experience.

    “What gives us the right to project our views of good and evil? This is a declaration that emotions are scientifically verifiable as specific natural laws. So they are being declared as a law passed down from nature. Regarding two key examples – abuse of children, necessities of pain and suffering – nature contains unlimited examples of these being a part of living. Nature/science isn’t the origin of these emotions – our thinking is. Our individual, diverse thinking. And by ‘us’ I am not limiting thinking to humanity – all thinking creatures with their personal preferences.”

    You’re close, but not completely. Humans evolved a moral sense. So, in that way it came from nature. But not in the way you’re thinking. Nature doesn’t have rules for morality. Nature is amoral. Humans got morality naturally. It evolved within humans. There is no reason to think that it evolved in other creatures. Morality is not a law of nature. It was a byproduct of human evolution.

    “Its like empathy. There is no such thing.”

    Again, wrong.

    “Opinions of right and wrong are in the individual.”

    Yes, to an extent, I agree. That is why I proposed a system for the individual to use. I did not propose a list of what is right and what is wrong.

    “I have no doubt that we are splitting hairs while saying nearly the same things -”

    Yes! Thank you!

    “but I also have no doubt that adhering to a system of morality defined by projections of good and bad can not be an effective approach – it is the approach that created the quagmire of religion.”

    The system was not defined by projections of good and bad. Again, this is the gross misunderstanding that I hope you and Hifi will understand. The system is defined by unnecessary pain and evil. Religion took that sense of morality, along with our evolved ability to feel guilt, and ran with it. Religion distorted what we had. It turned concepts of bad (pain) into concepts of following devils and fighting gods.

    I am trying to deconstruct “good” and “bad” and bring them back to the limited ideas that they should be. And just so you know, I don’t believe we should be using those labels all the time when we discuss situations with our kids. (Let me just prevent that potential misunderstanding right now).

    “I have not read much on evolutionary psychology – but knowing how much the science of psychology itself is in its infancy – I can’t imagine that the study of changing psychology through our evolutionary predecessors is very dependable as of today. I’m sure its very interesting though – and I do wish to learn more about it.”

    Evolutionary Psychology is based mostly on the Neurosciences and Cognitive studies. I know you are quite familiar with that research. Do you think those fields are dependable? It is also based on Evolutionary Biology, which I know you also depend on. It flies in the face of current premises of the current psychology that you referred to.

    You are right that many of the individual theories within the field are in their infancy and there is much interesting debate about them. But the field itself is quite substantial. I think you will find that you have already learned and accepted a large number of the concepts of Evolutionary Psychology because people like Richard Dawkins and groups like the Reality Club (which he is a member of) are bringing these concepts to common knowledge.

17. Noell:
    May 28th, 2006 @ 6:43 pm

    Oh, let me add one more thing: I acknowlege that, in spite of ourselves, even almost all moral decisions we make are in actuality motivated by our self-interests. So it really ALMOST does make morality a moot point.

    Except that there are times when we really do act out of our self-interest; when there will be no gain for a good that we do (except for bragging rights . An example of when that happens is when we help a stranger who will never have opportunity to help us back. This is especially true when we give something up in order to do that.

18. Hifi:
    May 29th, 2006 @ 2:24 pm

    Noell,
    Quite a response. I think it would be tedious for me to continue with a point-by-point response back. But I want to ask this, aside from the fact that it has been widely, if not universally sanctioned – especially, as applied to out-groups, why would someone rape a woman or abuse a child? (Hint: the dominance behavior that delivers long-term genetic advantage – usually to the male of the species.)

    But I would like to return to trying to get a grasp on the fundamental themes of a subject that is deep and difficult – both personally and technically. Basically, we keep getting confused between guiding each other on what is parentally prudent and what is politically tactical. Getting these mixed up in practice is to shoot one or the other of either our parental foot or our political foot. Besides that there is debate over whether there is any universals of morality that evolved in humans or whether it just indicates that sometimes humans find it useful to cooperate, sometimes they don’t and with no way to recommend under what circumstances that should be, there is no possibility of a socially proscribed system for it.

    Science-
    I think we all agree that there are no universally moral axioms, although some contend that there should be where they aren’t any now. But is there a universal moral sense? And if so, what significance should we give it? As a case in point, where “The Root of All Evil – Part II” showed team work among chimpanzees – at times – it is equally true that competition among alpha males and among females for the attention and resources of the males antagonizes the immediate common welfare – with treacherous behavior not uncommon. (Note: More than an interesting example, evidence shows that female primates are far more cooperative and males far more competitive – something that might apply to our own discussion of the relative merits here between Noell and the men!) And isn’t that what drives evolution: breaks in established norms to create pathways of opportunity for adaptation? Near-term survival (morality) is often at odds with long-term evolutionary advantage (to hell with morality).

    Where there is evidence of an evolved moral sense that still can hardly comprise the basis for any form of social prescription for it – a system, whereby, from input one could predict or even recommend an output. Rather the fact of human behavior in evidence before us everyday is that action with the common welfare in mind is taken whenever it suits the individual and selfish action is taken where the individual sees that his/her interests are in conflict with group welfare. Not what most anyone would agree is morality. In any case, because of that unreliability, modern societies rely on laws rather instinct or abstract principles to promote group survival and even happiness – not morality, but negotiation.

    Again, the practical function of either natural or religiously-concocted morality is to force conformity, reinforce class distinctions, punish diversity and condone the exploitation of out-groups. In that regard, in a philosophically ideal sense, perhaps morality natural or religious is fundamentally unethical in and of itself. It is pretty apparent that either kind of morality is not up to the demands and complexities of large, culturally-blended and unfairly structured societies. In this light, whether humans evolved such a sense – and it that it may have worked well-enough under the earlier tribal conditions that humans evolved to live in – is mostly moot as applied to our modern life. Where instinct left off, rational deliberation has had to substitute.

    Political/Public-
    Technically, this is a semantic issue. But it is important to understand that the connotations of word choice are very significant in the practical world. Today ,”morality” is linked at the hip with “religious”. Worse, it is an unscientific term as applied to any person or group, because, like character, there is no way to measure if anyone does or does not have it.

    I’ve been thinking, a lot of the controversy lies in the tense of the word used. Religious people think in terms of having morality, a set quality of mind – not as a situationally socially productive moral act (which I believe is where we all come to agreement here.) The problem is that when taken as a metaphysical quality of being, the only test can be whether one believes in a religion and accepts it’s doctrinal precepts. Consequently, when these two different views collide when we are in interaction with the religious we find it quite impossible to parse the difference between them. On the contrary, as much as atheists try to convince the religious that they can act morally, they will be all the more convinced that we do not have morality.

    Fundamental to my political stance, is the concept of framing” which I have tried to introduce in this topic, but for some reason hasn’t got much traction

    Parental/personal-
    If one always or even frequently puts the interests of the group first it can be quite disadvantageous to survival – but also to self-expression. And in the case of us contemporary, rational, Western humans, this tends to bury the independence, drive for innovation and individualism, which is the hallmark of the social and technological progress we enjoy – and which conservatives and fundamentalists of all stripes oppose in liberals and atheists.

    Yes, young kids need simple boundaries to develop emotional security; older kids need a parent or teacher’s reasons for thinking so. In the long run children it is only constructive to provide kids with the information and critical thinking skills they need to rationally deliberate and socially position their own choices. Some kind of humanistic morality might be offering them our conclusions. But wouldn’t it be better to just give them the questions and related information to give their own answers. That is not moral education, it is just education. Even then, certainly, we have no way to calculate if our children’s actions are moral or to measure their morality – so how would we ever know if our instructions were successful or incompetent. We have to trust them!

    For more on this, please read my character education articles:
    The Problem with Character Education, Responsibility? You’ve Got to Be Kidding” and Readings and Links

19. Hifi:
    May 30th, 2006 @ 1:12 pm

    Sorry, about the grammatical typos in the last post (wish we had a preview function).

    In my last sentence I wanted to clarify, “We have to trust that there is nothing wrong with our children.” I challenge anyone to be able to measure in my children any kind of deficit that needs correction or improvement. The whole idea is metaphysical fooey.

    I wanted to give an relevant example of long-term genetic advantage in being selfish over short-term cooperation. One is the traveling salesman/rogue. Women are attracted to them, but know they are not the marrying type. These guys impregnate and move on, thereby perpetuating the rogue gene. Before birth control and abortion (and now with the Pro-Life folks), rape offers the same genetic opportunity. Like everything else, we have it because it works to reproduce itself. Now, aborting every child of rape to prevent that drive from perpetuating, would be one idea.

    Hoever, the problem for the victims isn’t going to be solved by telling a potential rapist that we’ve all decided it is bad, or if we give them more lessons in empathy. In this case, is there something wrong with the child, inherently? It is from the victim’s perspective, but personal or even group reproductive success doesn’t take much of a hit from it.

    This is not even to bring up the fact that in war, wholesale rape has been a commonly deployed and very effective “biological” weapon for distributing the in-group’s genetic line througout an entire out-group. Better even than taking their resources to support your own society’s reproductive success internally and curtailing theirs. “Selfish genes” are pretty indifferent to the nicities of our middle-class American sentiment. (Remember, my anecdote about the peaceful tribe’s gene dying out when the other guys came over and took their women and food? They always take the women.)

    Putting aside this idea of rape as universal evil (where it wasn’t before), I wanted to introduce the idea of game theory here. Accordingly, the appropriate strategy is the one that gets you to your goal. From an evolutionary perspective, we can even be more general and say that it is the one that best leads to reproduction. The strategy may be may be cooperation, it may be competition, it may be outright deceit.

    Each strategy is effective for different kinds of people in different circumstances. It is part of the fundamental human survival toolkit. Knowing which tool to pull out when is the best path to success. Contrast this with religious morality’s social objective to coerce people – usually the peons – into cooperation only – to get people to put others (usually leaders, authorities, parents) before oneself. It is limiting. I think it applies equally to an atheist’s moral persuasion toward the same end. Speaking about winning the game, I wonder if leaders rise in power, in fact, just because they ignore the cooperative dictum while learning to exploit it in others.

    The whole point here is that if there evolved an equally immoral sense to the moral one, then it doesn’t make any sense at all to tout a natural morality. You could maybe claim you can reinforce cooperation with moral instruction but, religous morality with it’s principles and methods to subsume the welfare of the individual to the group is going to win that one hands down. And is that what we really want for our kids?

    Fortunately, kids are instinctively equipped with the human social strategy toolkit – and, consequently, many aren’t that easily conned into living their lives according to what someone else thinks. I want my kids strong and independent. For guidance, I tell them that their actions are smart relative to some goals while, at the same time, ineffective relative to others – depends on what they want in the short and long terms, as well. There are always, always trade-offs. Especially, I do not tell them that what they did was good (something important people like me would approve of) or bad (shows there is something wrong with you, son.)

20. Noell:
    May 30th, 2006 @ 2:37 pm

    Hifi–If you could only get me to figure out how to add the preview button! There are lots of ways I would change my blogsite if I were more technically inclined and if we weren’t always so busy just trying to keep up. Sorry! I feel for you!

    Great come back on that last post. It sounds very good, except that everything that I have read regarding all of those points actually come to different conclusions than the ones you are inferring (game theory, rape, women’s attractin to certain types of men,etc.) I would like to respond to them but I will need to refer to the books because we are now at a more complicated point in this discussion. I also have to keep up with regular postings on the blog and my other writing gigs. I will let you know when I am able to respond.

    BTW, I wouldn’t say it is 100% accurate to call rape a universally moral evil. I would say that unnecessarily causing someone else’s pain (especially for your own gain) is. Rape is just an obvious example where there are no REAL or legitimate exceptions, as there are with murder, therefore we conclude that it is immoral. Does that make sense? I just wanted to clarify that distinction.

    Also, when referring to universal morals, as I have been, it is actually more complicated than what it sounds. That universal moral sense is from a compilation of other universal senses or tendencies having to do with empathy, tit-for-tat, fairness, etc. Self-interest is also a driving force in our natural morality.

    It is for this reason that in many ways your theory and my theory coincide (whether you’re seeing it yet or not). There still are some differences, of course.

    It is such a fascinating topic, so I hope to get back to you soon.

    One last thing I want to say is that you have “shown me the light” with regard to the last paragraph of your last comment. While I still think you have one important aspect missing (that dang part about factoring others in the equation when making choices), I think you are mainly right on. And as I said in a personal email, I realize I moralize with a bit of excess.

    To respond to your second paragraph about your own children, there has been no reason for myself or anyone else to set up a red flag of warning about your children’s upbringing. If anyone else is forming judgements, I am not.

21. Agnostic Mom »:
    May 30th, 2006 @ 2:46 pm

    [...] Some of you were following along on the morality discussion in the comments section of Breaking It Down. A couple of days went by before I was able to get back to Ron and Hifi’s comments. I have since taken a more organized approach at responding point-by-point. If you were following along but didn’t realized we resumed the conversation, you can start here and read through the latest comments. [...]

22. Gregg100:
    May 30th, 2006 @ 11:08 pm

    This has become a very elaborate discussion on a complex subject from different perspectives as presented by Ron, HiFi, Fran, Noell and others. I would like to offer one more view that may have been hinted at but let me be explicit.

    When we are raising our children, we are either consciously or subconsciously working toward a general goal of developing them to the point at which they can and do function independently in whatever society/culture the elect to live in. From a philosophical perspective they can be viewed as volitional, goal seeking individuals that are dependent upon “wisdom” to enable decisions that contribute to achieving those goals. Since children are born with inadequate wisdom, there must be a process by which sufficient “wisdom” is acquired. This presupposes that the person is capable and willing to implement the results of the decision process through some form of directed action. Clearly the most fundamental goal is survival. It is obvious that some minimum level of wisdom and some percentage of decisions and resultant actions must be sufficiently self serving to achieve that goal. Beyond that minimal level, we can talk of any measure of “success” in life and use such terms as fulfillment and happiness.

    When we talk of morals and ethics, I simply consider them to be guidelines that influence the actions taken to achieve whatever goals the individual chooses to address. They are one dimension of a multidimensional database that makes up the constituents of “wisdom”. Other dimensions include knowledge based on “facts” resulting from either inductive or deductive reasoning, experience, intuition, virtues and any other source the individual has deemed sufficiently reliable to contribute to a decision making process.

    Let me head off two objections that will always arise from the previous paragraph. The first is the implication that the person has stored a set of rules called ethics as part of his wisdom system. It is entirely legitimate to establish the concept that one ethic might be to try to use reason and carefully weigh alternatives as a first step when considering an ethical situation. I consider it entirely within bounds to consider any rule that has been heard and considered whether is comes from a religious source or a scientific source. This reasoned approach may quite impossible since there are many situations that don’t lend themselves to reductionist processes

    The second is the concern that the person is placing any credence with such concepts as intuition. There are situations in which people have to “go with their gut” and that is simply the way things are in today’s world. It is a poorly understood, unquantified, largely irrational approach but it is used on a daily basis out of necessity. It is simply not possible to make objective decisions in every case.

    Going back to raising children, I used a six dimensional measure to decide when I had done the job of raising an independent person. This is similar to the theory and practice discussion that HiFi presented. The six dimensions were: Intellectual, Financial, Physical, Social, Philosophical and Spirit. Was he/she intellectually prepared ( education primarily) , financially prepared, physically healthy, able to function beneficially in society, philosophically aware and able to think critically and finally does the child have spirit, a subjective quality but I didn’t want to see a down trodden, depressed individual. Spirit had nothing to do with religion. (For fun we used a small star sapphire with its 6 pointed star as the symbol of “graduation”. I would have liked to have found blue and pink for boys and girls but there are no pink stars sapphires to my knowledge!)

    I mentioned virtues because I consider them to be an important part of the decision making repertoire. The specific ones we explicitly identified to work on developing are productiveness, integrity, honesty, independence, justice and pride. It is not a big leap to see where these virtues would easily influence decision. If a child has a sense of honesty he/she will take that into consideration when making a decision. It may be a difficult job to weigh some decision that involves both honesty and justice but that is just the nature of the beast and only experience will help. On the other side of the coin, the virtue of productiveness may make an easy job of deciding to help do yard work rather than going through the reductionist process of evaluating the benefit of making the house nicer so it will be worth more so that if my parents leave it to me I will benefit more and thus I should help or some similar logical trail.

23. Ron:
    May 31st, 2006 @ 8:05 am

    How slavery is understood to be regrettable using only ‘what goes around, comes around’ as a gauge:
    85% of what you buy at Walmart is made by workers earning less than 50¢ an hour. As the vast majority of small businesses close because they can not compete with Walmart (who is even willing to take a loss on products already produced at 7% of our minimum wage, to eliminate competition). Businesses disappear. We need jobs. We take anything available – and sooner or later find ourselves in the position of the people in those overseas factories. This is supposed to be why we have a minimum wage to begin with.
    Eliminating slavery is easily desired strictly from self interest. Also – I don’t want others to suffer because I don’t want a desire for suffering to be something directed against myself. What goes around, comes around.

    Empathy. In your definition you said to experience empathy you must have understanding of another’s situation. My argument still holds that you can not have pure understanding of anyone but yourself (you can only get close ). We can get close to understanding another, empathy, black, and white – but can’t actually attain them in a pure form.

    You say there are black and white issues in the world – and state that this fact proves my contention, that there is no true good or evil, wrong. Please share the black and white issues, so that I may know what you are talking about.

    The dumb chicken thing – it can be seen as a silly topic, but I think there is truth to be found on the issue. You wrote that you believe people don’t ignore the problems they accept in their day to day life, they just don’t know about them. I think that is mostly true – but I think they don’t know about them because they would rather not. It can be really uncomfortable. There is too much going on to stop and ask questions about things we accept just because that’s ‘how its always been’ or ‘how we do things’.

    I’m glad the comment about splitting hairs seemed to elicit some relief from you – - I think that it is a pretty important thing to keep in mind! I’m happy to be learning from you and the others, and that’s what makes it worth our while to come here!

    “We are a product of evolutionary forces, or a product of nature. Nature is not moral or immoral. It just is. The same goes for us, children, and human nature.”
    - if you had stopped there , I would be in agreement – but you continued to say we have evolved a special, unique among animals, form of ‘morality’ because we live in communities.

    I think my main disagreement with your position is in regarding humans as having an evolutionary advantage, formed from being in communities, that is unique among animals – called Morality. Our species is looking to be a fantastic flash in the pan on this planet – and the fire of that flash seems to be fueled by morality. It doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage if it amounts to our own destruction.
    If morality is evolved by necessities of community – insects surely show what the future holds for us, and I’m not too keen on the future if it means being chemically predestined to serve one of 3 or 4 roles (species wide).

    I don’t doubt that my thinking lines up with some things in evolutionary psychology – and like I said, I am interested in learning more. If it lays claim to evolved ‘morality’ – I’m still pretty sure that part of their thinking is bunk.

    One last thing – random acts of kindness are not exclusionary to acting in self interest, the more you do them – the more likely they will be done for you, especially if focused on a target group such as people in need (as you may find yourself in need some day). There are many other forms of applicable self-interest in this situation – doing something for someone else to enjoy (just making someone smile) makes us feel good to (its a pay off – sometimes we feel more accepted, sometimes superior or in control, sometimes we like the way it makes others think of us, sometimes it reminds us of all we have in the face of the struggle of others – making our own cares fade a bit, etc.)

    Thanks for all your patience and time spent discussing the subject.

24. Hifi:
    May 31st, 2006 @ 9:57 am

    Noell, Thanks for linking this topic back in at the top of the blog. I always worry that blogs, with their need to post ever newer material, encourage attention deficit syndrome in their commenting communities.

25. Hifi:
    May 31st, 2006 @ 2:13 pm

    Ron, random acts of kindness to strangers comes under the subset of evolutionary biology called Reciprocal Altruism. Generally,it is more risky for the individual to engage in this behavior the further from yourself in genetic relatedness the other recipient is. In fact, ripping off out-groups becomes more advantageous (after all, here we Americans are, prospering at the top of the socio-centric heap.)

    Thus in-group behavior for common welfare and out-group demonization and exploitation.

26. Ron:
    June 2nd, 2006 @ 5:43 am

    Feeding the ducks at the park is probably pretty absurd in evolutionary biological terms then, right?

    I think people do it because they feel they are drawing appreciation from their benefactors – also, they want to see the ducks better and do their best to make them seem under a limited form of control. Its great fun for kids too – but probably bordering on irresponsible.
    If this is part of the motivation that some use when helping the poor (feed the children campaigns on 700 club-type tripe) – it probably illustrates a pronounced disconnect between the races and social classes. Playing god – as it were.

    How does that fall into evo-bio – - when its not an attempt to elicit altruism from another, but to feel good about oneself?

    I know it sets up unrealistic expectations and dependencies. Duck bread each day may not always be around – and the ducklings brought about by kind intentions may be destined to starve after the ‘manna from heaven’ stops coming their way.

27. Ben:
    June 3rd, 2006 @ 1:06 pm

    Hifi, you seem fairly certain that there is no such thing as universal good. And yet there are a lot of things that you seem to take for granted, if not as being “good” if you would prefer not to use that word, at least as having a fairly evident positive value of some sort: critical-thinking skills, for example, and the reasoned discourse that those skills allow, not to mention scientific progress. Or what about developing an appropriate way to raise children and enable them to make ethical decisions?

    In your metaphysic, are these just personal preferences of yours? You say that you want “strong, independent” children — why? And as far as scientific or any other sort of progress goes, by what measure is something considered progress, as opposed to regress? Is there a word other than “good” that you would prefer to use in a qualitative assessment of these things?

    The general argument that you’ve repeated a number of times in these threads to establish the non-existence of universal moral principles seems to boil down to this, that morality is extremely (dare I say “irreducibly”?) complex. But is that enough reason to rule it unintelligible (i.e., unable to be resolved to universal principles)?

    Noell, you said in your original HNN article that religious rules of morality are arbitrary. Can you expand on this a bit? This would seem to fit with Hifi’s whimsical notion of “good” as “something important people like me would approve of”. In other words, it’s a construct. You make up a rule and expect others to follow it because you’re in charge. In the religious world (or at least in the one that many on this board allude to frequently), God makes up the rules (or God’s appointed representatives do) and the whole world has to follow them.

    I agree wholeheartedly that if this is the definition of good, then it’s a nasty lie, and there’s no way that one could ever discern universal principles in such a system. Interestingly enough, Hifi, I read recently that this notion, and particularly its influence in all stripes of Christianity, can be traced philosophically to our old friend William of Ockham. The article I was reading called the idea “nominalism”.

    It’s really an ancient question — you can find it debated in Plato’s Euthyphro, for example, in this form: is something good because the gods call it so, or do the gods call good what truly is good?

    But if one wished to answer that the latter is true, one would need some other notion of good. Which brings me back to Hifi’s term “self-interest”. Suppose that one defined good along the lines of “self-interest”. And if you don’t like to say “good” because of the nasty taste of nominalism that it leaves in your mouth, then call it something else. Call it Bob, I don’t care. Then perhaps the most basic and universal notion of Bob would simply be this: that a thing which exists, remain in existence.

    Or is this a problematic notion of a universal good? Certainly I can imagine things that I would rather die than endure, but let’s not take it to so complex a level. Inasmuch as I am a thing that is, or a dog, or a rock, or a planet, or a species is, there’s what might be called a natural force of self-preservation at work to maintain that existence.

    It’s “good” for a rock to remain a rock. It might be good for something or someone else if that rock is pounded into dust and mixed with other things to make cement, but it’s not good for the rock, because then the rock is not. And the rock naturally resists being pounded into dust — not in some sort of personal way, but that’s just how it is. It holds together.

    This is bordering on a tautology, I know, but then it’s a first (or at least very early) principle of a system of ethics. Combine with it a few other similar principles, and you can work out a moral code that’s really not arbitrary at all but is rooted in the notion that it’s good for a thing to be most fully what it is.

    Not to say that this working out of a moral code is so simple as the breeziness of my last sentence suggests, and here’s where I think experience and what Gregg100 calls “wisdom” come into play. As has been ably demonstrated in these threads, it’s very difficult to apply rudimentary ethical principles to real-life situations, especially when you have to take into consideration both the short- and long-term consequences of your choices. Sometimes being able to think morally, or ethically, or according to Bob, or whatever you want to call it, just isn’t adequate.

    Which leads to one of my questions for Noell: do you think that any moral system propounded by a religion is ultimately arbitrary? Or is it possible that some of the moral injunctions of religion may only seem arbitrary because of the offhand and perhaps even self-righteous way that individual religious leaders present them, when in fact the injunctions are the conclusions of long generations of principled moral thinking buttressed by experience, and could not exist without those long years of development?

    My other question is this: did you consider, and consciously rule out, the possibility of basing your moral system on a positive principle, rather than a negative one? I.e., “doing what-I-won’t-call-good of some sort” as opposed to “not causing pain”?

28. Ron:
    June 4th, 2006 @ 11:08 am

    Ben -
    Why on Earth would you consider a rock not being pounded into dust a ‘good thing’ – lack of change a good thing – or your notion that a rock resists being anything other than a rock a foundation for morality. Gotta say – this sounds outright insane.
    Rocks don’t have preferences.
    Your statement that HiFi calls anything ‘good’ (in any terms) pretty much guarantees that you either did not read his posts, or understand them.
    He wrote of enlightened self interest – personal choice shaped by circumstance and personal understanding of ones place in the scheme of things. A personal opinion of what it ‘good’ is just that – not a trancendent ‘good’ granted by existance, evolution, or nature.

    Nothing about discovering and adhering to preferences that aid in ones ability to live long and prosper is irreducible or transcendent.

    Noell misspoke, in my opinion, when she called religious rules arbitrary. Nobody threw a dart and made a rule from where it stuck.
    There were reasons that these rules were set up, and most of these reasons involve keeping people under the control of others (the ones privileged enough to be granted authority to create rules). Some of the rules were science and survival cloaked in supernaturalism – a good portion of them now without relevance because the conditions of their usefulness are long since past.
    “God” is not hiding in the details – as a transcendent system of morality (even as proposed by Noell, her system’s ‘transcendence’ indicated by its uniqueness to our species (in all its variety) and supposed quality of ‘law’ made up of what can only be boiled down to ‘evolutionary gifts of discernment’. It also fails to be a system at all while it contains the unqualified variables like ‘necessary’ and the personal understanding of whoever is in a position to act – variety equal to the number of humans alive).

    I’m willing to grant that her system can work for children – in many situations – but that it ultimately will fail them, as they come to understand their personal limits to knowing the minds and lives of others.

    Religion offers a set of rules (open to interpretation – thus the countless sects within specific beliefs, especially christianity, using the often contradictary Bible) for all of a certain in-group to agree on (on punishment of expulsion and human judgement) – but lacks the ability to account for the rest of humanity (and all other life), and is chock-full of outdated flotsam that does more harm than good (often resulting in the polar opposite of love and harmony).

    All of the attempts to defend it have dug its faults deeper into my understanding – as it lacks parameters and adequate descriptions of its most crucial principles (the existence of agreed upon human good and bad supposedly granted by evolution). “Necessary” is a back door. Understanding as numerous as the minds forming it (even that isn’t infinite or irreducible).

29. Ron:
    June 4th, 2006 @ 11:12 am

    Ben -
    Why on Earth would you consider a rock not being pounded into dust a ‘good thing’ – lack of change a good thing – or your notion that a rock resists being anything other than a rock a foundation for morality. Gotta say – this sounds outright insane.
    Rocks don’t have preferences.
    Your statement that HiFi calls anything ‘good’ (in any terms) pretty much guarantees that you either did not read his posts, or understand them.
    He wrote of enlightened self interest – personal choice shaped by circumstance and personal understanding of ones place in the scheme of things. A personal opinion of what it ‘good’ is just that – not a trancendent ‘good’ granted by existance, evolution, or nature.

    Nothing about discovering and adhering to preferences that aid in ones ability to live long and prosper is irreducible or transcendent.

    Noell misspoke, in my opinion, when she called religious rules arbitrary. Nobody threw a dart and made a rule from where it stuck.
    There were reasons that these rules were set up, and most of these reasons involve keeping people under the control of others (the ones privileged enough to be granted authority to create rules). Some of the rules were science and survival cloaked in supernaturalism – a good portion of them now without relevance because the conditions of their usefulness are long since past.
    “God” is not hiding in the details – as a transcendent system of morality (even as proposed by Noell, her system’s ‘transcendence’ indicated by its uniqueness to our species (in all its variety) and supposed quality of ‘law’ made up of what can only be boiled down to ‘evolutionary gifts of discernment’. It also fails to be a system at all while it contains the unqualified variables like ‘necessary’ and the personal understanding of whoever is in a position to act – variety equal to the number of humans alive).

    I’m willing to grant that her system can work for children – in many situations – but that it ultimately will fail them, as they come to understand their personal limits to knowing the minds and lives of others.

    Religion offers a set of rules (open to interpretation – thus the countless sects within specific beliefs, especially christianity, using the often contradictary Bible) for all of a certain in-group to agree on (on punishment of expulsion and human judgement) – but lacks the ability to account for the rest of humanity (and all other life), and is chock-full of outdated flotsam that does more harm than good (often resulting in the polar opposite of love and harmony).

    All of the attempts to defend it have dug its faults deeper into my understanding – as it lacks parameters and adequate descriptions of its most crucial principles (the existence of agreed upon human good and bad supposedly granted by evolution). “Necessary” and “Pain” are back doors. Understanding and preferences are as variable as the minds forming them (not infinite or irreducible – just in abundance).

30. Noell:
    June 9th, 2006 @ 7:35 am

    Ron-
    You said:
    “How slavery is understood to be regrettable using only ‘what goes around, comes around’ as a gauge: 85% of what you buy at Walmart is made by workers earning less than 50¢ an hour. As the vast majority of small businesses close because they can not compete with Walmart (who is even willing to take a loss on products already produced at 7% of our minimum wage, to eliminate competition). Businesses disappear. We need jobs. We take anything available – and sooner or later find ourselves in the position of the people in those overseas factories.”

    I understand the workings of Walmart, but this is just not an accurate account of the motivation for most of us. For example, because Israel and I are not in the retail industry, Walmart’s monstrosity will never threaten us. And because of mine and Israel’s inherent talents and skills, I have every reason to think that my children will share similar ones, in which case they will also not find themselves in the position you discuss. It is not in my self-interest to oppose the doings of Walmart. It would be in my self-interest to take advantage of the low prices.

    But, let’s say it was in my self-interest. The concept you are describing, or the self-interested motivation, is called “ultimate cause.” It is the evolutionary self-interest that taught that “what goes around, comes around.”

    I agree that self-interest is the ultimate cause for the existence of our morality. It is also the underlying motivating factor behind most, if not all, of what we do.

    But now that the interest of self-preservation has caused humans to evolve reciprocal altruism, and then sympathy, and then empathy, we now have moral reasons( the proximate cause) oppose slavery and other acts of violations. And since we now have a moral sense,we can even make choices to help others when there is no possibility of anyone reciprocating. That is why I can oppose Walmart when it would be in my personal interest to take advantage of the cheap prices. As our world has expanded from small tribes to a global network, we have less chances of reciprocity for our “good deeds.” It now requires a moral sense in addition to self-interest to motivate altruism in many circumstances.

    Self-interest is the “ultimate cause” of our gaining a need to make moral choices. Empathy and conscience are “proximate causes” that have developed through evolution.

    In his book, “The Blank Slate” Steven Pinker stated it this way when discussing self-interest and the expanding circle (the expanding circle has to do with Hifi’s references to in-groups/out-groups: as we become more global, humans have expanded the in-group):

    “Though the evolution of the expanding circle (its ultimate cause) may sound pragmatic or even cynical, the psychology of the expanding circle (its proximate cause) need not be. Once the sympathy knob is in place, having evolved to enjoy the benefits of cooperation and exchange, it can be cranked up by new kinds of information that other folks are similar to oneself.”

    Pinker also explains how “faculties underlying empathy, foresight, and self-respect” combine to create “personal and social change” when he explains that “moral progress can emerge from a fixed moral sense.”

    Ron, you also made this comment, which I agree with: “I don’t want others to suffer because I don’t want a desire for suffering to be something directed against myself. What goes around, comes around.”

    This concept also extends to our need to preserve our genes by protecting our children. I acknowledge that my entire motivation for talking about morality is because I want my children and their children to have a pleasant world to live in. That is all part of the underlying self-interest within. But it does not take away from the fact that we have evolved empathy and we can use our reasoning skills to rationalize using empathy to act in the welfare of others, for their sakes and not always our own.

    Moving on to your comment about empathy:

    “Empathy. In your definition you said to experience empathy you must have understanding of another’s situation. My argument still holds that you can not have pure understanding of anyone but yourself (you can only get close ). We can get close to understanding another, empathy, black, and white – but can’t actually attain them in a pure form.”

    It is not necessary to get pure understanding of someone’s situation. It would help. The more we understand the situation, the more empathy we may have toward a person. But it is not necessary. Your point does not rule out the existence of empathy, nor our ability to make moral judgments based on it.

    Have you ever had the experience where a friend or family member comes to you upset, and before they even have a chance to tell you why, they start crying. And before you have a clue of the situation or reason for their pain, you are tearing up and feeling for them? We can identify with the feelings of others, even without knowledge of the situation. That is motivation enough to want to help.

    Last week I watched Richard Dawkins’ entire documentary, “Root of All Evil” again and was shocked to realize that the entire point of the documentary was the very point I have been trying to make: that human beings evolved a universal moral sense and then religion came along and twisted it. He used the very phrase I have been using: “moral sense”, as opposed to universal morality, which is different from a universal moral sense.

    Dawkins even used empathy as one of the underlying reason for us having this moral sense. He explained, “We have a moral conscience and a mutual empathy.”

    Moving on, you said:

    “You say there are black and white issues in the world – and state that this fact proves my contention, that there is no true good or evil, wrong. Please share the black and white issues, so that I may know what you are talking about.”

    We may be at an impasse on this issue because I don’t know how to state it any differently than I already have. The general idea of causing unnecessary pain to others is the black and white. Since we do not want others to cause us pain or violate us, we also know we should avoid causing others pain and violating them. (This excludes “necessary pain,” such as the pain we one feels at the dentist, which is necessary to avoid further pain down the road. Or the pain we allow a child to feel at the natural consequences for not doing homework because it will help them to avoid greater pain when life requires them to be responsible.)

    The black and white becomes grey when it comes to the specific situations. This is why I don’t go into the specific issues. The specific issues and situations are grey. Therefore, we need to gauge each situation individually one by one (situational ethics). We can analyze them by the two questions I gave in the original article regarding causing others pain.

    At this point I don’t know how else to state it, and I think it is a communication problem on my part.

    As for your last paragraph, Ron, I agree with you that those are all a part of the impact of helping others. They are very often the reasons we help others or refrain from hurting others. But sometimes we all help others because we can. And oftentimes the choice that will make the world a better place is not the choice that will be in our own self-interest. From what I understand from Hifi, he is content with that. I am not. The more we help our children to understand others and the world we live in, the more we help them to develop empathy, the more they will make moral choices that will elevate the amount of happiness in the world and decrease the amount of pain and suffering.

31. Noell:
    June 9th, 2006 @ 7:43 am

    Gregg100–Your approach was so well-thought. I can’t help thinking, though, that while you stated that your approach is comparable to Hifi’s, I have to wonder if Hifi would disagree with using most, if not all, of the five virtues. He is very much opposed to the character model and the list of virtues reminds me of it. Maybe if he reads this comment he will confirm or reject this.

    I also can’t help but think that the list of virtues are just lessons in morality. I’m not criticizing it. I think your system was impressive. But I”m not sure how you think it works with Hifi’s.

32. Hifi:
    June 10th, 2006 @ 3:53 pm

    Noell -
    I think Ron did a consummate job of representing me and taking apart Gregg100s comparison in his comments. Thanks Ron.

    To return the favor, let me say that, yes, WalMart will affect you, Noell, quite directly and soon. Corporations everywhere are following in it’s wake to break unions, dispose of benefits, exploit labor… They can’t outsource, but they would love a guest worker program (employees who can’t legally complain or unionize). It’s not like trying to divine the long range consequences of child labor in 3rd world countries. This is instant karma. Whether a middle class exists anymore in the near future is about 2 degrees of relation from kicking you and me in the ass.

    “Moral choices?” What is this drive to make yourself out as moral? I am not moral, by anyone’s definition of it (which is exactly the point), and I’m proud of it.

    Yes, we have empathy, so what? That doesn’t necessarily direct or even impact our behavior. Empathy can just as well be, and often is, used to make sure that others will feel the pain we know we would. There is no “should” direction to a sense. Something tastes sweet, or it tastes bitter. Depends on your tastes and context whether you will eat it this time and it may change next time.

    In that regard, again, I defy anyone to be able to detect or measure the existense of a moral sense – especially that it be found wanting in my kids. As such it is purely a metaphysical construct, and therein lies the problem with employing the concept at either the personal or public level – it is all bound up with “should”: to conformity with culturally exclusive behavior that has little to do with anything that evolved in us – except our ability to override every other instinct with culture.

    Shame on Dawkins to call this culture overlay on instinct, “distortion” in the pejorative and only in the case of religion. Rather, culturally mediated control of instinct is “transcendant” (in the neutral meaning of the word). Like every evolved social structure in animals, culture isn’t good or bad, it is merely adaptive for time and place.

    As to black, white and gray, the trade-off between my happiness and your suffering isn’t the black and white of anything, it is the source of gray. Contrast this with religious morality which is only black and white (”no exception for abortions – none!”). That is the crux of the public debate. Noell’s situational gray, “situational ethics”, is the very definition of immorality that the conservative right opposes in us. So if we play this little game on that public field we lose.

    Listen, guys, we are unique in all the world, in all of history. We can conduct our lives rationally, not from instinct, not from unconsciously adopting culture. We have arrived two quantumn jumps from where we began. We are now in the position to consciously examine and change our society and the world however we decide – no biological grounds, no traditionn or history, only by applying rational deliberation.

    With such opportunity, why would we ever want to invoke such a horrid idea as morality? Why muck around in the anecdotal abstractions (you know, the sentimental examples that are supposed to somehow generally apply)? So we can elevate a feeling of sympathy in our children? Why should that work? They either have it or they do not. I mean, can you elevate someone’s sense of smell? Has someone come up with a prescription for moral eyeglasses? You can’t coax a sense; you need to intervene physically to impact it. A new drug, brain electrodes, perhaps?

    It is crazy to imagine the implications. Such ambitions are for religious moralists and the myopically power-drunk who would exploit them. That is not us. We can help our children understand the factors directly relevant to a specific situation as how to act. Same with a public policy decision for that matter. If an action is not in their self-interest it is irresponsible to ask a child to consider doing otherwise. Caring if we are labelled moral shows that we have been snarred in the trap (frame) that religious people, who rely on the argument, have set for us. Throw it aside and they’ve got nothing (”Abortion you say? Gay marriage? Let’s look at the facts. Hmmm… it’s not about you or me, it’s about a particular person. Why should you care? Why is it your business? How would it ever affect you?”)

    Personally, I have no interest in whether a person is moral. But I care very much if they are intellectually lazy or shoddy making them ill-informed and unconscious. At this juncture in history the world is small enough that anyone acting in their self-interest to build social structures for ensuring just treatment and opportunity for themselves and their descendants is going to also support my own self-interests in the bargain… and that should be all the affirmation any of us should need. Speaking of which, we have bigger fish to fry and that is eliminating the religious influence from public policy that is at odds with all of our self-interests in the real world – as it is only of benefit to someone who believes in an afterlife.

33. Ron:
    June 12th, 2006 @ 8:21 am

    We’ve gotten so long-winded on this that I’m hoping to close until the subject is refreshed, at least in as far as I contribute.

    Empathy – - In terms of defining a system, what you are calling empathy, I’d call heartfelt sympathy. Empathy remains variable – and in that way can not be measured into a system.

    Walmart – as HiFi said, you can not consider yourself out of its influence. If your income was made publishing articles in magazines, what happens when Walmart (as ‘the last distributer standing’) doesn’t carry the magazine? Paid to write on the internet? Internet access is something Walmart is just as interested in cornering as every other consumer need – - and even were this not the case, fewer and fewer people will have money to spend on your product as they lose their jobs, unions, and consumer rights.
    Its an economic ecosystem. Everyone who is paid, is ultimately paid by a consumer.
    I watched artists, customer service reps, writers, technical artists, account executives, stamp-makers. stitchers, and product development executives lose their jobs as the company I worked for became increasing beholden to Walmart. Most of these were white collar jobs.

    Black and White :
    You acknowledge that the terms fall apart in the absence of specifics. This is the point I’ve been trying to make.
    Systems require control over definable variables.

34. Noell:
    June 12th, 2006 @ 7:16 pm

    Ron-Before I forget, I remembered a while back that you said something about me saying humans have an evolutionary advantage over animals. I meant to tell you that that is not my way of thinking. Evolution isn’t about progress. It is about adapting to the environment. It is about having characteristics that give you an advantage over others of your same species, characteristics that are “selected” because they helped you live longer and spread more genes than others of your same species.

    So if I ever used the word “advaantage”, it was either a mistake, or I meant something different, such as “unique.” Or that we have another option for dealing with eachother. Just wanted to clear that up while I remembered it coming up somewhere.

35. Noell:
    June 12th, 2006 @ 7:53 pm

    Ben-I am sorry your comment got lost to me in the mix.

    Note to Ron: I am quite sure that Ben does not believe rocks have preferences. He was posing a philosophical hypothetical that was aimed more at identifying a principle rather than use a specific and real situation. I think he used a rock as his example in order to keep the discussion simple; to avoid the complications and many variables that crop up when we have tried to discuss other human dilemmas.

    It is the very reason that I do not yet want to talk about specifics until I feel that there is a general understanding of the principles I am describing in the first place. It’s not that we CAN”T talk about them. And it would be fun for philosophical discussion, but at this time I feel the topic is already too complicated. When I tried to answer some of your specific examples earlier it confused the situation because we are not in agreement on whether there is a universal moral sense and whether there is such a thing as empathy.

    But back to you, Ben. I do think I mis-used the word arbitrary. I meant that the rules that the various religions and sects lay out seem arbitrary to an outsider because of the reasons Ron laid out. In a different post used the word “arbitrary” in a way that I think is more accurate to make the same point.

    Since I plan to submit that article to ClubMom, I think I will write up a post that explains what I meant, shows the other way I used it, and then I will ask for feedback. I’d like to get a consensus of whether the word works the other way or not, and if there is a more accurate word.

    As for positive and negative approaches, I do go both ways with the system. I think it is “good” to increase happiness in others. I have avoided this issue because at this point I don’t feel like addressing concerns of obligation. I am sure that as soon as I talk about increasing happiness in others someone will want to know how much I would obligate everyone to do. Of course, it is not my concern how much good anyone else does. I think that is a personal decision. There would also be assumptions that an emphasis on increasing the overall happiness in the world would mean subverting your own self-interest. Again, I think self-interest is a fundamental part, and the most important component, of increasing the overall happiness in others.

    As I am writing this last part, I realize that it is coming out in a complicated and incoherent mess.

    I thought when I wrote that original post that I was breaking things down to their simplest parts. This discussion, along with a question Dan asked me on the original morality post, has helped me to see that there is an even more basic foundation that I didn’t think to address. It has come out in the course of the discussion, but it is all so complicated by now that I think I need to start over with that.

    Not to say that it will cause everyone to suddenly agree with me. But I think it will at least show that the theory is consistent and valuable.

36. Noell:
    June 12th, 2006 @ 8:07 pm

    Ron–

    I agree. I think we’ve gone in so many circles based on misunderstandings that this is a big mess. As I mentioned in the comment above to Ben, Dan asked me to address a concept that is fundamental to my view. Maybe it will be a better starting point for this discussion and allow us to step back a bit.

    As for heartfelt sympathy versus empathy. I don’t see how empathy is more variable than the sympathy. You and I just seem to have a term preference. I have heard Dawkins use empathy in the morality context. I have read Pinker use each word at different times in the same context. Sometimes sympathy, sometimes empathy.

    I think Pinker would say both contribute to the make-up of a moral sense. To me there is a major difference. Sympathy is an emotion, whereas empathy involves more thought-action. It requires more of the person than to just feel. And it brings more powerful emotions; emotions that have more power to motivate someone to act.

    Black and white: I didn’t acknowledge that the terms fall apart. I just said they become more complicated and require us to use analysis and critical thinking skills to determine, ultimately, which action would best decrease or avoid causing someone pain or suffering.

37. Hifi:
    June 14th, 2006 @ 2:46 pm

    Two points I made that I hope didn’t get lost here:

    1) You cannot prove a “moral sense.” I defy anyone to be able to detect or measure the existense of a moral sense – especially that it be found wanting in my kids. As such it is purely a metaphysical construct, and therein lies the problem with employing the concept at either the personal or public level – it is all bound up with “should”: to conformity with culturally exclusive behavior that has little to do with anything that evolved in us – except our ability to override every other instinct with culture.

    2) There is no “should” direction to a sense or an ability. (Perhaps that is why people are pushing for moral sense as the one that does have a “should” to it.) Like strength, empathy can just as well be, and often is, used against others as for them. Empathy can ensure that others feel the pain we know we would. I am sure the best torturers would score highly on this scale. There is only one known measurable ability that is able to apply itself to desired outcome of the use of our other abilities: rationality – channeled through scientific understanding and research.

38. Ron:
    June 15th, 2006 @ 3:17 pm

    I consider sympathy something a person can provide another – and have for another – - while I don’t feel empathy is an appropriate description of how one can feel for/with another. I think I’ve figured out why I believe this to be so:

    Some ‘psychics’ consider empathy a psychic ability – the ability to cast one’s mind into another’s and feel their emotions. If you can do this – you are called an “empath”. Maybe that is where I get hung up with the use of the word
    In my head you are talking about something on par with levitation, spontaneous human combustion, and Bigfoot to suggest we can feel the very same things as another – even though I know there is an implied limit to one’s degree of empathic feelings.

39. Noell:
    June 15th, 2006 @ 3:43 pm

    WOW! That psychic association to empathy is new to me. I know nothing about it.

    This is an example of what lies at the root of our entire disagreement: associations to words.

    My idea of morality has nothing to do with universal truths, judgements upon us, right and wrong in an other-worldly sense, right and wrong as determined by “enlightened people”, or anything of that nature.

    But because you and Hifi associate morality to those things, you have been unable to separate those ideas from anything else that I write. Morality, the way I see it, derives from self-interest and self-preseration.

    Religion and authority figures twisted our sense of morality. Psychics twisted the concept of empathy.

    I am willing to opt for the word “ethics” over morality in most conversations. My position on the subject has not changed, but I can see that some people are unable to accurately understand what I am talking about because of associations to the word “morality.”

    I am not willing to change my use of the word, “empathy.” This is the term that I read all scientific journals, books, and articles (actually, so is “moral sense,” which I must continue to use at times). It is a very specific term that I feel is the foundation of ethics.

40. Ben:
    June 16th, 2006 @ 12:01 am

    Noell, you said: Morality, the way I see it, derives from self-interest and self-preseration.

    This seems like what I was trying to get at. This is, if not identical with, at least close to, the foundational principle of what has for centuries been called “natural law”. It’s a system of ethics that takes as its starting point a definition of “good” as (roughly) “that which is desired” and “happiness” as “the attainment of the good” — or, to put it more simply, “getting what you want”.

    Obviously (I think) there are different wants (self-interests) — we want food, we want pleasure, we want the species to propagate. And, I would venture, there are different kinds of wants. Apart from those more immediate ones I’ve just mentioned, we want beauty, we want discussions like these (dare I say “truth”?), we want peace, we want love. These seem to be in a class apart from our more animal desires.

    Thank you for noticing that my rock example was not idiotic. I agree that rocks don’t have preferences in the sense that animals (human or otherwise) do — although I invite Ron to explain why he thinks that’s obvious. But they do “resist” disintegration, if in no other sense than that of Newtonian inertia. It takes a lot of effort to dis-integrate a rock.

    Ron, it could only sound insane to say that it’s good for a rock not to be pounded into dust, if you have some definition of “good” in mind that makes that claim insane. I offered a definition of “good” — that things which exist, continue existing — and explained how that would apply to a rock. Do you have an alternate definition of “good”?

    And my question for Hifi stands: what does “enlightened self-interest” have to do with having strong, independent children, and whose interest is at issue here? What if your kids don’t want to be strong and independent? Should your desire for that override their contrary desire?

    And what about scientific progress? What if some people don’t want scientific progress, and don’t want its findings to be taught in public schools? To get right down to it, who cares about enlightenment anyway? I submit that Hifi does, and in so doing that he acknowledges a good which has, as its reference point, something other than his own personal preferences — even if he claims otherwise in his posts, all of which I did read.

    What if we were to build on my definition of “good”, to include the fulfillment of desires other than the “desire” for existence? So that for the hungry animal it is “good” to eat, and for the lonely human it is “good” to find company. To Hifi I might say: for that which can be enlightened (i.e., the human mind), it is “good” to be enlightened.

    Pretty soon (although not too soon) you could work out some secondary principles, and before you knew it (or maybe after quite a while) you’d have the starting-points for some actual, real-life ethical decisions. I think it would require some notion of a hierarchy of desires — i.e., that the basic desire for existence can in some cases be ethically overridden — as when a mother risks her life for her child, or a soldier risks his life for his country. Could such a hierarchy be acceptable to the Darwinian naturalist?

    Noell, on positives and negatives: I’m wondering if an ethical system that’s founded on negative principles, can, in the end, remain coherent. You mentioned “happiness” in one of your posts above — what’s that? And your notion of necessary pain — why would pain ever be necessary? Simply to avoid greater pain in the future? Or because there is some good to be achieved?

    For example, should the high-school student buckle down and do his homework even though it drives him up the wall, because (1) he’d rather not be working at McDonald’s all his life? Or because (2) he really wants to go to Harvard? Those are two quite different ways of answering the question.

    And, in purely practical terms, they provide two different levels of incentive. Quite distinct from the question of philosophical coherence, will anyone (i.e., our children) ever be consistently attracted to a system of ethics that’s based on negative principles?

    I’m looking forward to reading and responding to your “arbitrary” post, Noell, but it might be a little while.

41. Ron:
    June 18th, 2006 @ 8:12 pm

    Ben –
    Sorry to respond to this late, and so far into a list of comments that you may not check back for it.
    I think the rock example was a strange choice for the topic of morals, preferences and what is good or bad (if anything).
    I don’t see where you are coming from to say that a rock having its solid state broken down by outside forces is bad – how having anything change is bad. Maybe its because you like rocks just like they are – and want them to stay that way? Laws of inertia don’t suggest that change is preferable or not. A stream is not doing harm to a rock by running over it for years until the rock is broken down – - its just being a stream.
    My statement that this lack of value judgements from inanimate objects is obvious is based on the fact that the objects themselves do not have the means to think or consider a preference for one state or another.
    If its a rock that your house is built on, and water is breaking it down – leaving your home on unsteady ground – - I can fully understand that this would be something you do not like, and to you it would easily be considered a bad circumstance. But to the rock? To the rock – its just existance as usual. That rock has changed its state many times in the past and will do so in the future as well. I don’t see any good or bad in the matter, nor do I imagine any rational lines of thought that would lead another to that understanding (with the example of nonspecific rocks.
    I hope this clarifies for you. I am sorry for the dismissive tone I gave in my previous post – - I was confused by your choice of examples. I sometimes choose examples that don’t communicate well, so I sympathize with your trying to make a point from an obscure angle. It doesn’t make it a bad point, just not one that read clearly to me – the summation at the beginning of your second post leads me to think that we have more in common with our understanding than not.

42. Ben:
    July 17th, 2006 @ 8:03 am

    Ron,

    I don’t know if you’ll ever even see this post so I’ll try to keep it short. Long time since I’ve read this blog, just had a new baby, if you have children I’m sure you understand.

    Thanks for your thoughtful response. I attempted earlier to talk a bit about nominalism, which I understand to be a philosophical notion which, though it is of medieval origin, nonetheless seems to affect just about every discussion of ethics and morality that takes place in the modern world.

    If I’m not mistaken, one of the key consequences of nominalist thought is the idea that ethics and/or morality are imposed upon the world from without — either by God or man, depending on your metaphysic. This runs directly contrary to a much older tradition which, also in medieval thought, was called natural law.

    In an extremely oversimplified nutshell, natural-law ethics arises out of the world as it is, and is to be recognized and conformed to by moral actors (you and I), rather than the other way around. So you do X or Y because it’s good in itself, and you avoid A or B because it’s not good. One does not do X or Y, or avoid A or B, simply because so-and-so in authority said so.

    In short, natural-law ethics is a purely reasoned (no religion involved) system of objective morality. The problem, I think, with trying to discuss such a system in today’s world is that our thought is so shaped by nominalism that we can hardly even think about a system of thought that eschews nominalism.

    I think this is why my rock example may have seemed so obscure. I was soaked in natural-law ethics and the principles that undergird it for four years in college, so the ideas seems as familiar and clear to me as anything.

    But I can see that they’re not so obvious in themselves. Here’s from your reply:

    My statement that this lack of value judgements from inanimate objects is obvious is based on the fact that the objects themselves do not have the means to think or consider a preference for one state or another.

    Of course, and I didn’t mean to suggest or imply otherwise — that would be too wacky. But one of the bedrock corollaries of natural-law thinking, as I hope I’ve just outlined, is the notion that good is not just in the mind of those beings that do have the means to think or prefer. Good is actually in reality itself, to be discovered, not imposed, by thinking and choosing beings.

    And for something as simple as a rock, perhaps the question isn’t any more complex than this (with apologies to Shakespeare): to be, or not to be. Where “to be” is good, and “not to be” is not good.

    But try not to load up the word “good” with all manner of ethical baggage. I think that we hear the word “good” with our 21st-century ears and immediately think, perhaps without even realizing that we’re thinking it, something like this: “‘good’ is that which a pre-made system of morality or ethics has designated to be acceptable”.

    But natural-law ethics proceeds in the opposite direction, following from the “good” that is discovered in the world. So you have to have a more basic, perhaps even metaphysical, definition of “good” in place before you can even start to work out your ethics. And you would end up with something like the converse of the 21st-century implied definition of “good”, something like this: “ethics or morality is a system of thought that guides thinking and preferring beings toward ‘good’”.

    That’s why I used the word “Bob” above. Substitute “Bob” for “good” in my last statement about the rock. Substitute anything for good, for that matter. The statement remains true, because once the rock has been pulverized, there’s no more rock, and so no adjective can describe it, unless that adjective occurs in a sentence where the verb is in the past tense.

    And so existence is seen to be a foundational and absolutely necessary good, upon which all other goods depend. To call existence “good” is to make a beginning, not to draw a conclusion, as you seemed to have in mind in your last point:

    If its a rock that your house is built on, and water is breaking it down – leaving your home on unsteady ground – - I can fully understand that this would be something you do not like, and to you it would easily be considered a bad circumstance.

    The question of what’s good for the rock has absolutely nothing to do with what I like or do not like, and with the circumstances surrounding the rock. Take me away, take the river away; let the rock exist in a vacuum if you like. The question still remains, as does its answer: it’s good for the rock to be, because once the rock is not, there’s no more rock and there’s no more question.

    I just re-read that last sentence and realized that a few hyphens might be in order. All that stuff about nominalism and which way you proceed, from good to ethics or vice versa, necessitates a certain emphasis in these claims: I’m not saying this:

    It is good for-the-rock-to-be.

    Instead, I’m saying this:

    It is good-for-the-rock to be.

    Or better yet:

    To be, is good-for-the-rock.

    Does any of this make any more sense than my earlier posts?

43. "DickMo" (Dick Montague):
    November 18th, 2006 @ 2:51 pm

    Noell,

    My view is that the moral law you say is absolute — that it is immoral to cause unnecessary pain and suffering in the world — is fundamentally different from most other moral laws, in that it is based on compassion, not rules. In my blog on the subject of moral origins I have been distinguishing between two basic origins of pro-social (or unselfish) behavior. One characterizes political liberals, or more specifically economic liberals, and the other characterizes political conservatives, especially economic conservatives.

    I believe the pro-social motivation of economic liberals (the bleeding heart folks) comes from a sense of compassion, or empathy, which I define as actually feeling discomfort when another person is hurting or in danger of being hurt. It is pain by proxy, not just a recognition of anothers’ pain. It is therefore a driver of behavior. I speculate that this empathy originally began as maternal love, which became necessary to ensure the survival of offspring when it became advantageous for them to enter the world while their brains were still forming critical neural connections, when they were not yet ready to fend for themselves.

    I believe the pro-social behavior of economic conservatives (free-enterprisers) , on the other hand, arose when it became advantageous to get along amicably with other members of a group. It is motivated by respect for rules of conduct that limit the scope of selfish competition. Economic conservatives consider competition to be a moral good, not a moral bad, but certain tactics, such as violence and theft, are prohibited via a social contract. The ideal is the competitor who wins while obeying the agreed-upon rules. Compassion is nice, but morally irrelevant to the pure conservative.

    Of course, none of us are pure anythings, and we therefore all exhibit both liberal compassion and conservative respect for rules, but in differing proportions.

    I’d be interested in your response to these ideas.

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