Where do you get your morals and ethics?

[bill4long]

Hrm… do gods detest ugly babies?

My guess is that the relative gods detest them, but the Root of Reality does not.

[Gadianton]

Cam's example of symmetry --

Symmetry is "good" but is it morally good? A lot of things are really effective but probably amoral; or a murderer could be really good at murdering. Two senses of the word "good".

While nothing (to my knowledge) is settled in ethics to say that morality must be framed in terms of imperatives, going this route does make it easier to discuss what most people assume is morality.

It's wrong to kill. It's right to help an older person cross the road.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Cam's example of symmetry --

Symmetry is "good" but is it morally good? A lot of things are really effective but probably amoral; or a murderer could be really good at murdering. Two senses of the word "good".

While nothing (to my knowledge) is settled in ethics to say that morality must be framed in terms of imperatives, going this route does make it easier to discuss what most people assume is morality.

It's wrong to kill. It's right to help an older person cross the road.

Morality seems like it's definitely a human concept. Nature, whether it's animal or plant life, seems to be indifferent on the issue. Heck, altruism has been argued as being selfish, so I guess getting down to brass tacks as to 'where you get your morals and ethics' I suppose morality is both an outside-of-the-self construct as well as a genetic mandate.

If morality is externally derived from a god then it's out of our hands since morality and the various constructs in which you find yourself appear to be fairly deterministic. If one find absolution from the built-in sins of this construct, then there are things at play that we have little to no control over. If one's programming is such that you seek absolution then that's your mandate. If you reject absolution because, say, you feel taking responsibility or ownership over your behavior is your mandate, then that's what it is.

The question itself also seems to be one of those things that goes along with the person who is answering it.

I do want to note, like Donald Hoffman has explained (as well as many others), we only see a very narrow bandwidth of reality. How can we answer a question like that accurately since we, for all intents and purposes, blind?

- Doc

[Gadianton]

I agree that morality is subjective and totally made-up. In terms of articulated rules and laws it may be a human construct but I'll tell you, I've spent enough time at dog parks to know that dogs know what's right and wrong at the dog park -- at least the socialized ones do. It's amazing how you can have such mayhem and nobody generally gets hurt until the odd rescue with an oblivious owner shows up.

There are atheists who believe in objective morals, I just haven't been impressed with the arguments I've seen. Though, those arguments aren't worse than theistic arguments, which there are unlimited varieties of and nope, not impressed.

DCP is the perfect example of somebody who can't comprehend why anybody would be good unless objective morality is accepted and for him, only God can be objective. Of course, he'd never even attempt an answer to something as basic as the Euthyphro Dilemma. I've known enough people who believe in objective morality with a moral compass lost at the north pole to know that it doesn't actually matter. People like DCP still believe what they want to believe and just say it came from God, so in a way, it's even worse because there's no pause that maybe they could be wrong.

While the Euthyphro Dilemma is a good one, even better in my opinion is the dilemma between duty and feelings. When a mother takes care of her baby, is she acting out of moral good? According to DCP, she can't be, because we hear him say at least sixty times a year that tastes and preference can't constitute right and wrong. Even if you have great taste. Immanuel Kant (God-fearing Lutheran) has the most famous example of logic-based ethics and pressed the point that emotive based good isn't doing good. Here is a rando Kant link:

https://open.library.okstate.edu/introp ... al-theory/

Man A decides he will help the woman across the street because if he didn’t he would feel guilty all day. Man B decides he will help the woman across the street because he recognizes her as his neighbor, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson makes the best cookies in the neighborhood. So, Man B helps her because he reasons that he will be rewarded. Man C decides he will help the woman across the street because it is the right thing to do...However, for Kant, only one of the young men’s actions have moral worth and it is Man C

Kant uses an esoteric formula to derive duty from pure reason, although it's only clear for really easy cases. Anyway, although Kant is most famous for demonstrating the disconnect between duty and feelings, the observation goes for anyone who argues for Divine Command Theory as DCP does. DCT also falls into duty ethics. In this case the duty is a command from God rather than an imperative that falls from pure logic. Weirdly, the only people wired to be moral aces under duty ethics are folks diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder because they must rely entirely on logic and reason to behave in a socially acceptable manner.

Although it was always impossible to get DCP to answer a question, I'd speculate he'd try to have cake and eat too. Here's a Mormon fluffism we've all heard: The Telestial person is motivated to do good from fear of consequences, the Terrestrial from duty, and the Celestial from love. He'd surely try to rescue people with good hearts by saying something like, "though shalt not kill" is only valid as a decree from God, but we can still refrain from killing people because we love them. God has instilled love in us to help us make these decisions.

Well, Along comes Abraham and Isaac in order to drive the point home that in Divine Command Theory, duty reigns supreme. And, in Mormonism, the D&C is clear, "obedience is the first law of heaven." Abraham and Isaac makes clear that not only does duty trump love, but the most righteous of righteous acts become so as conflicted with the purest of emotional ties. And remember the Sacrament story of the switch operator, who did his duty and switched the train track knowing his son would be ran over by the train? He who forsakes family for my sake? It's always about the will to do what is right over and above the desires of the flesh or the heart, even when the desires accord with the laws, such as loving a child.

And so DCT really trips you out when the first two commandments are "Love the Lord they God" and "Love they Neighbor as thyself". You almost have to invalidate emotive love and recognize that godly "love" is duty to God first and to others second.

[Gadianton]

Might as well finish this off. The most official 'dilemma' is between duty and consequences, 'deontological' vs. 'teleological' ethics. The best example of consequentialism is on Vulcan. Spock says "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Most ethical systems can be fit into these two categories. There's a twist, because in teleological ethics, the means don't count, but in duty ethics, depending on the theory, ends can count. They don't count for Kant, and this gives rise to one of the most famous dilemma's, "would you lie to an SS officer to save the lives of Jews living in your basement?" According to Kant's ethics, the answer is "no". Lying is universally wrong (universalizing the imperative is part of the definition of being moral).

Secular thinking is swayed to consequential ethics. Something is bad because it hurts somebody, not because God done said so or because some weird logic derives it. But we aren't consistent here, because if you plot the murder and then kill one person that's a way worse sentence then killing the same person in a "crime of passion", even though the consequence is identical. Interestingly per previous post, in a twist, 'emotive' love loses again.

To my mind, it's really hard to justify sting operations that put people away for intent who were baited and the crime never materializes. I'm happy to call a person a good person who refrains from hurting others irrespective of the person's reasoning for it. All other things being equal, I can't think of a better reason not to punch somebody other than it hurts the person. That doesn't mean there aren't consistency problems, but I do think it's obvious that this is where morality arises, even at a dog park, we think it's right to avoid physically hurting our fellow beings. It's both where we "get" morals from and what "grounds" them -- if the pain caused by striking someone isn't the "ground" for abstaining from the action, then nothing is. Again, there can be huge problems with this, but if you had to pick a starting point it would be here.

by the way, I've mentioned Mormon reasoning for duty ethics above, but as we'd expect, the scriptures and prophets are all over the place. There's all kinds of evidence Mormonism is also consequentialist (the late Clark Goble worked hard to make this true). "It's better that one man perish...". It's nothing per se, just whatever the leader needs to sound good in that moment.

From an anthropological perspective, Biblical laws arose consequentially, beginning with disease. And it's hard to imagine another scholarly criteria by which to study any culture from the outside aside from materialist, consequence-oriented assumptions. If I recall correctly, in Jared Diamond's theory about Mayan collapse triggered by drought, human sacrifice tracks the depleted resources -- not enough for everyone. Well, that's not the justification Mayans, that's the material underpinning. But no scholar is going to theorize, including FARMS scholars, that you know, all these depictions of Quetzalcoatl make it highly likely that Quetzalcoatl lives, and did reveal his need for more human heads to be appeased.

[Physics Guy]

What I remember of Kant's categorical imperative was that one should act from such a principle as should be a general law for everyone. You are not allowed to treat yourself as a special case. I don't remember anything about the principle having to be simple, though, let alone simple to the point of foolishness.

A principle like the rabbinical one of saving human lives at any other cost could surely be accepted as a principle that ought to be general law. A rabbi would say that one not only can lie to save a human life, but must lie to save a human life. I would think that Kant could have accepted that as a principle instead of just a blanket rule against lying under any circumstances.

[Gadianton]

It's been a long time, but I do recall an attempt or two to rescue Kant and seemed more like apologetics. My gut instinct is that allowing all kinds of granularity for complex scenarios where effectively, lying (1) != lying(2) might defeat the purpose of "universalizing". I think universalizing is supposed to go beyond just going beyond yourself to everyone and also account for all situations. I would also expect that if somebody did figure out the gold standard for deriving ethics, that it wouldn't just happen to justify everything we think is cool. I'd expect harsh ethical reality to be at odds with intuition at times just as it is for science. Of course, as I've stated, I think ultimately objective morals lose relevancy when out of sync with intuition unlike science.

And this isn't disrespect to Kant or anything, the guy was the Plato of our time if we had to pick somebody.

If I were going to do Kant apologetics, I'd try a different path, instead of make Kant more in line to common sense in extreme situations, maybe a more universal Kantian perspective would help us avoid such situations in the first place.

[sock puppet]

Where do you get your morals and ethics?

Particularly the grounding, down at the very bottom.

Morals are what an individual will do and won't do, born out of fear 'at the very bottom.' For religionists, fear of eternal judgment and punishment. For everyone, fear that unless society steps in and protects others and what they have, then society can protect me and why I have either. Fear is the first and greatest motivator.

[Canadiandude2]

Oddly enough- given the platform -the Atheism Subreddit actually has a pretty sophisticated list of resources and conceptual introductions on the matter for anyone who is sincerely puzzled on how to construct secular framework(s) for both the empirical world and subjective human existence.

I myself use a thin-model of social constructivism, but (as implied) in conjunction with the belief in a material, physical reality beneath all those layers of (inter)subjective, coconstitutional social artefacts.

There are many ways to ground one’s ethics from a secular perspective. Some of these behaviours and beliefs about the world are adaptive, whilst others less so, and some kinda just ‘hung around’, as the result of past constructs and/or material conditions.

There isn’t necessarily any meaning to the world aside from what we decide. Internal and external processes may encourage or reward certain behaviours- but we still tend to arrange a (usually loose) constellation/hierarchy of priorities of what we value.

Part of the reason why few people outside Mormondom listen to apologists like Peterson, is because the central debates around the existence/nonexistence of god(s); the supernatural; or divine purpose- have changed well beyond most of his tired arguments.

The scholars whose fields weigh upon these subjects have either moved on beyond strawmook arguments in their own engagement(s) with alternative models- or have opted to largely disengage from good-faith peer review with their best critics.

Granted- there are plenty of scholars who disengage from the proponents of rival models- out of the latter’s lack of reliable and valid arguments/evidence for such, but one would need to examine each case carefully in order to determine which (if any) of these categories applies.

On a less academic note, I like how this trope describes my current state of existentialism mixed with methodological naturalism.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... tiNihilist

[Res Ipsa]

I like the Trope, Dean Robbers.