Morality Does Not Exist

[Merko]

In that case, I have to say that belief in the existence of commands, requests, questions and the like is based on some sort of metaphysical delusion.

Why? Commands and requests are based on power. When you command or request someone to do something, you are 'threatening' that person: with violence, losing their job (starvation), reduced affection (you want your loved ones to keep loving you, right?), etc. Of course there may be a delusion going on. There may be no real force behind the threat, or you may be able to withstand that force.

A question is simply a request for information. Additionally there is no need for the requested information to be relevant to reality, or the answer to have any relation to reality.

There is absolutely no need for anything to be objectively 'right' or 'wrong' for any of this.

EDIT: The article you're linking to argues against moral relativism. But here we're discussing moral nihilism, and the arguments in this article just don't apply there.

 

[Tricky]

I see this spiralling down the same declining path as all of our "free will" discussions go. Morality as a "thing" or "force" can't be shown to exist. But morality as a descriptive term for a loosely defined set of rules by which individuals decide on which things are good and bad certainly exists. We use words like this all the time to describe things which are purely conceptual. Nevertheless, these conceptual things need to have a word to describe them for the purposes of communication so what is the point of trying to say "morality doesn't exist," because if it didn't we'd just have to come up with another word to describe the concept.

I think the better question would be, "Is there any such thing as moral superiority?"

 

[l0rca]

Taken from an essay I wrote about a year ago, titled Morals, Meaning, and Metaphor:

Perhaps it is better not to place our decisions about morals and philosophy on the classical but difficult to define principles of "right" and "wrong," but rather on progression (positive), and entropy (negative). Human beings, even on a cellular level, are driven to progress, expand, and form relationships, as are many of the processes that shaped the universe, and in turn created us. Entropy, or (in our case of the meta, cognitive and abstract), immoral behavior, can be most accurately seen as the unwise pursuit to unmake ourselves and destroy meaning. It could be summed up to say that there is literally meaning, and growing meaning in life and evolution, and the reverse, meaninglessness, in death and entropy. Morality is the advanced and evolving ability for conscious beings to govern themselves, which helps ensure survival and progress.

 

[Tricky]

Taken from an essay I wrote about a year ago, titled Morals, Meaning, and Metaphor:

"Perhaps it is better not to place our decisions about morals and philosophy on the classical but difficult to define principles of "right" and "wrong," but rather on progression (positive), and entropy (negative). Human beings, even on a cellular level, are driven to progress, expand, and form relationships, as are many of the processes that shaped the universe, and in turn created us. Entropy, or (in our case of the meta, cognitive and abstract), immoral behavior, can be most accurately seen as the unwise pursuit to unmake ourselves and destroy meaning. It could be summed up to say that there is literally meaning, and growing meaning in life and evolution, and the reverse, meaninglessness, in death and entropy. Morality is the advanced and evolving ability for conscious beings to govern themselves, which helps ensure survival and progress. "

If I read your essay right, I would gather that you would answer my question with, "Yes, there is such a thing as morally superior. It means that which ensures survival and progress".

While I admit to being an incurable specist and caring more about ensuring the survival and progress of Homo sapiens, I have to grant that what may ensure our survival and progress is not necessarily what natural law and evolution will determine to be successful. Still, as a basic assumption, you can't go wrong with, "my species should survive". It's the old "selfish gene" thing.

 

[l0rca]

Tricky, I honestly didn't understand that second paragraph, and I don't know exactly what moral superiority means.

 

[Tricky]

Tricky, I honestly didn't understand that second paragraph, and I don't know exactly what moral superiority means.

It simply means that some morals are better than others. Since you seem to be positing in your essay that morals have evolved to "help ensure survival and progress", then I assumed that you would also agree that morals which best ensured survial and progress were more "fit", hence "superior" than those which did not. For example, a moral code which included aversion to murder would seem to have better survival potential for the species than one which did not.

 

[l0rca]

Do you want my opinion now, or my opinion a year ago?

 

[Tricky]

Do you want my opinion now, or my opinion a year ago?

LOL. How about both? And why it changed.

 

[l0rca]

You know, I'm trying to play Super Mario 64 on my emulator right now. Going through these explanations is monotonous. So this will all be written sort of on the fly.

Back then, what I can tell from the rest of the essay, it didn't seem like I had an appropriately full understanding of the universe and modern theories on how it worked. One of the ideas driving my conjectures in the essay was that the forces in the universe lent themselves to combine and build matter in the universe, and only entropy, and entropy-esque combinations of these builds were causes of a disintegrated state. My idea was that although there was no discoverable purpose, or reason to include a purpose in the universe, actions in the universe seemed to on the whole favor a cooperative, meta process, where things come together, reactions happen, etc. And the processes and actions that created us, although there was no purpose behind them, could be seen as regressive mirrors of us. What I rather mean is, matter that builds upon itself, and our interactions between humans; the natural processes of the universe, and our morality, were the same entities, differencing only in degrees of complexity. Therefore it made sense to assume that morality, an abstract force of binding, fit in with the natural processes and progression of the universe.

My opinion today on the matter is one more complex, but I still largely agree with my past self. I have a better understanding on how the universe works, how the human mind works, and how our mind evolved. I take it as a sort of compliment to myself that it wasn't until after I wrote that essay that I found scientific studies in a new sub-field you may have heard of: neuroethics. Later essays I wrote were more aligned with those studies.

I now consider the processes in our universe to be a ground-up evolutionary process. I'm not a strong advocate of string theory (though I do highly recommend educating oneself in it), but my vague idea of matter at a fundamental level is one of a sort of randomness, which has in the case of our known universe canceled its more entropic affects out and has on a macro level been producing the known interacting, cooperative universe. These understandings change my past idea for me in this way:

While I would have once stated the ultimate-best moral code to live be to be a product of intelligence, I now do not consider it to be necessarily so; simply the best choice humans have for a moral code. Instead the best moral code would be the one that does the best for the human race, or a meta-human race, or a race several degrees away; the best moral code is unknowable, and is rather a product of complex evolution, and may not have much to do at all with what we find inertly "right".

EDIT: w00t. Only ten minutes. Time to wake Mario.

 

[Merko]

I see this spiralling down the same declining path as all of our "free will" discussions go. Morality as a "thing" or "force" can't be shown to exist. But morality as a descriptive term for a loosely defined set of rules by which individuals decide on which things are good and bad certainly exists. We use words like this all the time to describe things which are purely conceptual. Nevertheless, these conceptual things need to have a word to describe them for the purposes of communication so what is the point of trying to say "morality doesn't exist," because if it didn't we'd just have to come up with another word to describe the concept.

I think the concept of "morality" is much more than what you're stating though. Additionally I think the concept you're talking about would be more accurately phrased (social) norms.

I don't deny that norms exist. But I argue that throughout almost all discourse on "morality", take for example the link above provided by LMoG, there are additional qualities assigned to "morality" beyond what you're referring to. It is definitely so in the field of acacemic philosophy, perhaps slightly less so in common usage, but still overwhelmingly so. While we could try to redefine the word 'morals' to mean nothing more than 'norms', this misses the point of this thread.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

This is circular logic, you're assuming that morality exists. If morality does not exist, none of them can be 'right', because there is no 'right', and so your statement that "They can't both be right" is void and without meaning.

Sorry, Merko, we shall have to disagree about this. If I am making assumptions here, they do not include the assumption that morality exists, as I am not at all clear about what that phrase is supposed to mean in this discussion.

What I have drawn attention to is the existence of a humdrum fact: moral disagreement. It is possible for Smith and Jones to disagree about the rights and wrongs of abortion: their utterances are logically inconsistent with each other. They are inconsistent in exactly the same way as " Food is always nourishing" and " Sometimes food is not nourishing". And that is exactly what I meant when I said that they couldn't both be right.

This is not an isolated example. It is characteristic of moral utterances that they can stand in logical relationships to each other: contradiction, contrariety and the like. Moral arguments may be formally valid ( modus ponendo ponens, say) or invalid ( affirming the consequent, say). And the evidence for this, as I suggested in the lines immediately following those you quoted, is to be found in the practice of conducting moral disputes in everyday moral language.

 

[athon]

I think you're committing a logical fallacy here. Let's say that someone does not believe in God. Upon visiting a foreign nation, this person spouts her disbelief in God, and promptly gets executed by the authorities.

Does this prove that there is a God? Of course not. That something is a spook does not mean that your attitudes towards it can not have consequences. People are often influenced by beliefs in spooks.

However, we are not influenced by the spooks themselves. We are also not influenced by any such thing as morality.

We are however directly influenced by short-temperedness. Even if for some reason no one would know about this trait, a short-tempered person would still be quick to anger.

Firstly, I think you'd need some evidence that the majority of the non-religious population is moral because of an appeal to an objective set of moral rules which exist external to the community's perception of it.

Secondly, I can use myself as an example to demonstrate that I am influenced by a concept of morality. I do not committ certain acts because;

a) I empathise with others that my behaviour can make them feel good or bad,
b) My behaviour will in turn influence how others treat me, and
c) I have been raised to feel bad when I do something that is considered immoral by my community.

These three points constitute morality, and at its core is the reason why most people are essentially moral. The individual might appeal to religion or to some other source in explanation of their feelings, but the logical follow on from that would be that a person who once believed in god but lost their faith suddenly would no longer display moral behaviours.

By suggesting that simply because there is no objective moral 'spirit' or entity, as people might assume, that there is no morality is ludicrous.

Athon

 

[athon]

I see this spiralling down the same declining path as all of our "free will" discussions go. Morality as a "thing" or "force" can't be shown to exist. But morality as a descriptive term for a loosely defined set of rules by which individuals decide on which things are good and bad certainly exists. We use words like this all the time to describe things which are purely conceptual. Nevertheless, these conceptual things need to have a word to describe them for the purposes of communication so what is the point of trying to say "morality doesn't exist," because if it didn't we'd just have to come up with another word to describe the concept.

I think the better question would be, "Is there any such thing as moral superiority?"

Thanks Tricky. I love it when I can't find the words to express what I want to say, and then somebody else does it for me.

Athon

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Why? Commands and requests are based on power. When you command or request someone to do something, you are 'threatening' that person: with violence, losing their job (starvation), reduced affection (you want your loved ones to keep loving you, right?), etc. Of course there may be a delusion going on. There may be no real force behind the threat, or you may be able to withstand that force.

A question is simply a request for information. Additionally there is no need for the requested information to be relevant to reality, or the answer to have any relation to reality.

There is absolutely no need for anything to be objectively 'right' or 'wrong' for any of this.

EDIT: The article you're linking to argues against moral relativism. But here we're discussing moral nihilism, and the arguments in this article just don't apply there.

I may be missing something here, but I'm not sure the body of your post addresses the argument I put. If you can rephrase the point, perhaps that would help.

As to your additional comment: the OP certainly looks to me like an argument for a form of relativism, as moral predicates seem to be relativised to the preferences of the speaker. However, even if I've got that wrong, there remains the point, made in the article, that any account of morality that ignores or denies the fact of moral disagreement is inadequate.

 

[athon]

I think the concept of "morality" is much more than what you're stating though. Additionally I think the concept you're talking about would be more accurately phrased (social) norms.

I don't deny that norms exist. But I argue that throughout almost all discourse on "morality", take for example the link above provided by LMoG, there are additional qualities assigned to "morality" beyond what you're referring to. It is definitely so in the field of acacemic philosophy, perhaps slightly less so in common usage, but still overwhelmingly so. While we could try to redefine the word 'morals' to mean nothing more than 'norms', this misses the point of this thread.

So this again comes down a disagreement in definitions.

I can only disagree in your connotations of morality, then. The onus of proof is on you to demonstrate that the majority of non-religious people believe that when 'morality' is indicated, they are referring to it as an objective source.

Athon

 

[baron]

Few non-believers—no matter how strongly they reject traditional Christian morality—are willing to call moral issues strictly matters of opinion.

I agree with this although I don't understand why it's the case. I eagerly snapped up The God Delusion hoping Dawkins would lay the matter to rest once and for all, but I was disappointed. It seems to me that the majority of people, believers or otherwise, must at some level believe in a fundamental externalised meaning from which morality arises.

I remember having this discussion with an atheist friend a long time ago. During our conversation I asked him if he would kill someone to further his own situation (hypothetically of course!) if there was no chance of being found out, and - to keep things simple - the victim had no friends or kin. Of course he said no.

On asking why he replied that it was wrong. When pushed to explain what exactly was "wrong" about it he told me it must simply be a behavioural trait, conditioned through evolution, that steered us away from confrontational situations that might endanger us, or that might create situations that prove detrimental in the future.

No arguments there, but it took me quite a while to make him understand that wasn't what I was asking; I was interested in why he wouldn't kill someone, given the scenario I had outlined. If he understood that it was simply behavioural conditioning that was putting the idea of "wrongness" into his head then why, in this hypothetical case that allows for no come-back, would he not consciously override it and do the deed.

In the end it all came back to it being "wrong", which left neither of us any the wiser.

Since that conversation I have considered that perhaps it is simply a feature of self-preservation, as memory of the deed could conflict with "hard-wired" evolutionary conditioning and cause psychological problems later in life, but this doesn't really help explain anything other than to offer the explanation that morality may simply be another word for selfishness.

 

[SirPhilip]

With respect to today’s subject, I am in the minority even among atheists. Few non-believers—no matter how strongly they reject traditional Christian morality—are willing to call moral issues strictly matters of opinion. However, I remain a steadfast moral relativist despite the rarity of my breed. Morality is, at its heart, a subject about which no facts exist.

Chaos and order are fundamental to everything. In fact, I don't think any negative exists which is more clearly defined by implication of this than amorality and morality.

 

[hammegk]

...
In the end it all came back to it being "wrong", which left neither of us any the wiser.

Since that conversation I have considered that perhaps it is simply a feature of self-preservation, as memory of the deed could conflict with "hard-wired" evolutionary conditioning and cause psychological problems later in life, but this doesn't really help explain anything other than to offer the explanation that morality may simply be another word for selfishness.

Or that 'karma' is more than just a word?

That's why I only have ethics. And whilst "good" and "bad" are not easily assigned here, I can still work well with "better" or "worse".

I'd say every behavior you present to the world defines your morals.

 

[SirPhilip]

I agree with this although I don't understand why it's the case. I eagerly snapped up The God Delusion hoping Dawkins would lay the matter to rest once and for all, but I was disappointed. It seems to me that the majority of people, believers or otherwise, must at some level believe in a fundamental externalised meaning from which morality arises.

Indeed, but this isn't fundamentally a religious construct, but a part of human nature. If God was present in this universe, religion wouldn't exist. Unconditional moral choices wouldn't exist either, nor would faith, nor would the true potential of human dignity - or disaster.

 

[Merko]

Sorry, Merko, we shall have to disagree about this. If I am making assumptions here, they do not include the assumption that morality exists, as I am not at all clear about what that phrase is supposed to mean in this discussion.

I'm arguing that the term 'morality', as used by philosophers and laymen alike presupposes the existance of 'moral facts'. I claim that there are no 'moral facts'.

What I have drawn attention to is the existence of a humdrum fact: moral disagreement. It is possible for Smith and Jones to disagree about the rights and wrongs of abortion: their utterances are logically inconsistent with each other. They are inconsistent in exactly the same way as " Food is always nourishing" and " Sometimes food is not nourishing".

If Smith says that something is (morally) right, and Jones says that the same thing is (morally) wrong, then this is only irreconcilable if there is such a thing as moral facts. If there are no moral facts, as the thread starter argues, and as I argue, then there is no way at all to say that either of these people are right or wrong, in fact their statements have no meaning, other than perhaps as an expression of personal preference.

Note that the thread starter uses movies and weather to illustrate this exact point, namely that it is only a matter of opinion if something is 'right' or 'wrong'.

This is not an isolated example. It is characteristic of moral utterances that they can stand in logical relationships to each other: contradiction, contrariety and the like. Moral arguments may be formally valid ( modus ponendo ponens, say) or invalid ( affirming the consequent, say). And the evidence for this, as I suggested in the lines immediately following those you quoted, is to be found in the practice of conducting moral disputes in everyday moral language.

Again, this presupposes what you are trying to prove. We could claim the same about arguments regarding what movies are the best. We could claim that if Smith says that romantic movies are the best, but Jones thinks that comedies are the best, then this is logically irreconcilable, because romantic movies and comedies cannot be best at the same time. But doing so presupposes that we think there are objective criteria for what movies are the best.

a) I empathise with others that my behaviour can make them feel good or bad,
b) My behaviour will in turn influence how others treat me, and
c) I have been raised to feel bad when I do something that is considered immoral by my community.

These three points constitute morality, and at its core is the reason why most people are essentially moral.

I would argue that these three points constitute prudence, which is not the same as morality by any common definition.

Let us consider a person that does not empathise with others, who does not care to influence others by setting a good example, and who has not been raised to feel bad when hurting others. Additionally, this person is a pedophile and enjoys sex with small children. Assume that this person is given the opportunity to rape a child with no risk of getting caught.
Would it be prudent for him to do so? Certainly, given the premises.
Would it be moral for him to do so? I know of no one who would claim this.

It seems very likely that there are many atheists using the term 'morality' just like you do. In fact, I do it myself at times. But this is really just a form of fraud on our part. If we were psychopatic pedophiles, we would never get away with it. The only reason why we do get away with it is that we're not behaving sufficiently different from those believing in moral facts, that they will reveal us.

I may be missing something here, but I'm not sure the body of your post addresses the argument I put. If you can rephrase the point, perhaps that would help.

Presumably this is because I failed to understand your argument. Can you explain how the existance of orders, requests and questions would prove the existance of moral facts?

You only say that this would mean that belief in the existance of these things must be based on some form of 'metaphysical delusion'. Why?

I tried to give an alternate explanation of orders, requests and questions that do not require either moral facts or any metaphysical delusion. That said, I do believe that most people are deluded of course, when they believe in moral facts. But they don't have to be in order to 'believe in', or make use of, orders, requests or questions.