Morals, why does it seem that a lot of people don't care to follow them anymore?

[FlippyD]

I guess I have a really strange worldview, but a lot of this discussion seems kind of odd, especially "morals are not based on rationality" and "morals are relative."

I've always thought that morals are objective and recently I've been thinking that they're based (or should be) on rationality.  Because what higher device do humans have than rationality?  I can't think of anything; "intuition" and "faith" don't have any bearing on a material world, unless we put them into action.

Anyway, I don't think that morals are something that people have to follow, or that you somehow have to deny yourself in order to be moral.  Morals would be the lack of infringing on others' rights (of course, I have plenty of radical ideas about this as well: all rights are inalienable and include the right to property, and rights such as "the right to have food/roof over head" are not valid etc.), which really doesn't take much effort at all.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, however disjointed they may be.

The problem is, most people aren't rational.

 

[djzalzer]

The problem is, most people aren't rational.

Then most people would be immoral.

 

[Incognitus]

I disagree. I think people are very rational within the frameworks they have. The problem is, often those frameworks are wrong, destructive and counterproductive, and many are, er, "less than enthusiastic" about examining those frameworks, often because one's identity is so entangled with them that it can become painful to take it upon one's self to examine them, hence self-denial or delusion is often preferable.

/pseudoanalysis.

 

[___]

a.) We only have CLEARLY real-time videotaped+audiorecorded history of the last 50-60 years--only about 30 of which have been actually FREE MEDIA

Haha, yeah, the pre-Murdoch half!

 

[djzalzer]

I disagree. I think people are very rational within the frameworks they have. The problem is, often those frameworks are wrong, destructive and counterproductive, and many are, er, "less than enthusiastic" about examining those frameworks, often because one's identity is so entangled with them that it can become painful to take it upon one's self to examine them, hence self-denial or delusion is often preferable.

/pseudoanalysis.

You can't be partially rational.

 

[Incognitus]

I disagree. I think people are very rational within the frameworks they have. The problem is, often those frameworks are wrong, destructive and counterproductive, and many are, er, "less than enthusiastic" about examining those frameworks, often because one's identity is so entangled with them that it can become painful to take it upon one's self to examine them, hence self-denial or delusion is often preferable.

/pseudoanalysis.

You can't be partially rational.

Yes. But irrationality is acceptable within a framework, and, from an outside perspective, seems perfectly irrational.

It doesn't matter if it's a witch-burning religiousity framework or a neo-classical market framework: the things which take place under those are nuts, but to their prescribers make perfect sense. The framework can break down due to insufficent or incorrect information.

Aristotle's observation that the Earth must be still because if you throw an object up in the air it falls back down in a same path, which doesn't happen whilst moving is perfectly rational, but we since know that it's completely wrong.
To a man-made global-warming activist, all of their graphs can show perfectly well that we're all going to die and it's all our fault makes perfect sense to them (after all, unbalancing the ecosystem with carbon emissions is a sane and rational suggestion), but given the confluence between solar activity and the increase in temperatures on various other planets which have a direct correlation to ours suggests that maybe there is something wrong with the framework.

There are loads of examples - You can make a perfectly sensible and rational defence of eating meat, and of not eating meat. Both of which can be perfectly rational but exist within different frameworks based upon such things as "animal rights", or "health".

 

[djzalzer]

Yes, but if you accept things as rational which are irrational based on what the other people around you are feeling or your emotions, you aren't being rational.

Objectivity is key, I think.

I also think we're getting a bit off-topic. >.>;

 

[Incognitus]

Yes, but if you accept things as rational which are irrational based on what the other people around you are feeling or your emotions, you aren't being rational.

Objectivity is key, I think.

I think it's interesting that you used the expression "what other people are feeling", then contrasted that with your use of your own emotions. ;|

Fortunately I didn't bring up relying on your emotions at all.

That doesn't add up: For one thing, you appear to be coming close to suggesting a sort of tyranny of the majority, in respect to moral frameworks (I added "moral" to keep this on topic: don't tell the moderators. They'll never know). What you have here would appear to be the suggestion that those who control the "centreist" position are correct.

Also you bring up that old condundrum about objectivity: there are many people who have claimed to achieved it but frankly haven't.

 

[djzalzer]

That doesn't add up: For one thing, you appear to be coming close to suggesting a sort of tyranny of the majority, in respect to moral frameworks (I added "moral" to keep this on topic: don't tell the moderators. They'll never know). What you have here would appear to be the suggestion that those who control the "centreist" position are correct.

Also you bring up that old condundrum about objectivity: there are many people who have claimed to achieved it but frankly haven't.

Hmm.  That couldn't be farther than what I'm trying to say...  What I mean:

There is only one moral answer to one question.  (IE stealing can't be "right for me because I believe in it and I'm a thief."  It's wrong either way.)  Majority vote doesn't work in morals, because brutes and criminals can vote too.

Also, what I added in my most recent post meant:  just because something is the majority rule does not make it correct.  And the same goes to how you feel about it in the moment (I'm mad at Nancy, I think I'll murder her)

About the whole "nobody's really objective" comment, have you ever seen a morally perfect person?

 

[Incognitus]

Yes, but some people would say that a starving child who steals a loaf of bread is different from, say, a drug addict stealing to fund their next hit or a bank robber. And so yes it can.

If there was only one moral answer to one question then we wouldn't have had a branch of philosophy spending over two thousand years discussing it now, would we?

if you accept things as rational which are irrational based on what the other people around you are feeling or your emotions, you aren't being rational.

Does this include various social or moral frameworks as you seem to be implying in your last post? If so my original criticism still stands.


I can see where I was confusing your post now that you have clarified it: you moved from the specific example of others to a hypothetical/conception notion of others without telling me :P

 

[djzalzer]

In my opinion, a starving child stealing a loaf of bread is just as immoral as a thief stealing a rich man's diamonds and giving them to the poor as is that pimple-faced kid from down the street stealing all of your mom's jewely.  It's all thievery.

If there was only one moral answer to one question then we wouldn't have had a branch of philosophy spending over two thousand years discussing it now, would we?

Sorry, I'm not too filled in on philosophy; what is that? (wiki link maybe?)

Does this include various social or moral frameworks as you seem to be implying in your last post? If so my original criticism still stands.

Yes.  If I am a Muslim in a Middle Eastern country, it is still wrong for me to deny women their right to vote, even if everyone around me thinks differently and my priest tells me differently.  Being a cannibal isn't okay, even if you live in a village with other cannibals.  Et cetera.

What exactly do you mean by 'framework'?  I hope I've interpreted you succeessfully.

 

[Dissonance]

Yes.  If I am a Muslim in a Middle Eastern country, it is still wrong for me to deny women their right to vote, even if everyone around me thinks differently and my priest tells me differently.  Being a cannibal isn't okay, even if you live in a village with other cannibals.  Et cetera.

Why or why not are these things the case though?

I mean I can't think of a rational reason why being a cannibal is immoral except for diseases that are born from cannibalism - if we discover effective ways to combat them, why not eat the dead?  Better than letting them rot.

 

[Incognitus]

Djzalzer - You began your post with the most important words of all: "In my opinion".

Yes.  If I am a Muslim in a Middle Eastern country, it is still wrong for me to deny women their right to vote, even if everyone around me thinks differently and my priest tells me differently.  Being a cannibal isn't okay, even if you live in a village with other cannibals.  Et cetera.

I'm not going to disagree with you there except to say we should have examples closer to home. They are more revelevant, and the ones which are always overlooked. It's quite easy to point at someone else and telling them they are wrong, but a lot more "difficult" to do it to one's self.

 

[djzalzer]

Why or why not are these things the case though?

I mean I can't think of a rational reason why being a cannibal is immoral except for diseases that are born from cannibalism - if we discover effective ways to combat them, why not eat the dead?  Better than letting them rot.

(What d'you mean by why are these things not the case though?)

I meant killing someone and eating them.

Here is my reasoning to the starving child view:

Say the child steals a piece of bread and eats it, and keeps on living.  He physically denied the original owner of the bread his right to own the bread, his property right.  If one viewed this as moral, and that need (instead of the right to property) decide the distribution of goods, then, carrying this to its logical conclusion, I should not have the Good & Fruitys sitting on my desk that I am munching on, because I am not starving to death and people in third world countries are; after all, they need it more than I do.  It's a mantra of self-sacrifice and service, and the question why begs to be asked.

I can't really think of a "closer to home" argument... maybe you could think of one?

 

[Incognitus]

I can't really think of a "closer to home" argument... maybe you could think of one?

I did.

It doesn't matter if it's a witch-burning religiousity framework or a neo-classical market framework: the things which take place under those are nuts, but to their prescribers make perfect sense. The framework can break down due to insufficent or incorrect information.

Aristotle's observation that the Earth must be still because if you throw an object up in the air it falls back down in a same path, which doesn't happen whilst moving is perfectly rational, but we since know that it's completely wrong.
To a man-made global-warming activist, all of their graphs can show perfectly well that we're all going to die and it's all our fault makes perfect sense to them (after all, unbalancing the ecosystem with carbon emissions is a sane and rational suggestion), but given the confluence between solar activity and the increase in temperatures on various other planets which have a direct correlation to ours suggests that maybe there is something wrong with the framework.

There are loads of examples - You can make a perfectly sensible and rational defence of eating meat, and of not eating meat. Both of which can be perfectly rational but exist within different frameworks based upon such things as "animal rights", or "health".

 

[djzalzer]

Spoiler: Animal Rights (kind of off topic)

What, animal rights?  Animal rights are absurd.

Problems:  Animals (besides humans, if you want to think of it that way) are amoral.  There is no way for them to decide if something is "wrong" or "right"; they're just doing what is best for them, with utter disregard to human or animal "rights."  Why would you equate something that is moral to something amoral, something intelligent with something brutish in comparison?  How does something without the ability to recognize rights have them?

And if animals have rights and are equated to humans, then all carniverous animals would be murderers.  With utter disrespect for the feelings of a poor mouse, the cat selfishly kills the mouse and uses it for its own purpose!  If you equate humans and animals, you must expect the animal to behave with the same reservations as humans or the human to be brought to the level of the animal, a senseless, brutish, well, animal.

So disrespecting animals (using them for treatment, eating them etc) isn't immoral, because they can't have rights unless you like to abandon reason, of course...  So eating meat is purely a personal choice that has to do with health.

Run animal rights in another topic if you want, any further discussion on that tangent will be deleted but I'll leave the post there so the text doesn't get lost. It's arguable on many grounds though, might be fun. ~N
You suggest that rationality is not always true (Aristotle and all).  But here's my question: If you do not use rationality to define yourself, your world, and your ethics, what do you use?

 

[rey meustrus]

If you can't perfectly rationalize your morals, then they should remain undefined.  When we cannot rationalize a mathematical statement, one of the most objective human constructs in existence, that's exactly what we do.  Just think of it this way: Reality was divided by zero.

 

[___]

Why or why not are these things the case though?

I mean I can't think of a rational reason why being a cannibal is immoral except for diseases that are born from cannibalism - if we discover effective ways to combat them, why not eat the dead?  Better than letting them rot.

(What d'you mean by why are these things not the case though?)

I meant killing someone and eating them.

Here is my reasoning to the starving child view:

Say the child steals a piece of bread and eats it, and keeps on living.  He physically denied the original owner of the bread his right to own the bread, his property right.  If one viewed this as moral, and that need (instead of the right to property) decide the distribution of goods, then, carrying this to its logical conclusion, I should not have the Good & Fruitys sitting on my desk that I am munching on, because I am not starving to death and people in third world countries are; after all, they need it more than I do.  It's a mantra of self-sacrifice and service, and the question why begs to be asked.

I can't really think of a "closer to home" argument... maybe you could think of one?

Assuming the preservation of human life is an utmost ethical imperative your argument falls apart. If a starving child starves to death in order to satisfy a property right, and the preservation of life is more important than the preservation of property (as implied by almost any decision by any human being when posed with the situation in a direct fashion) then that code of ethics is violated. As an example, if a person is driving a car, and a pedestrian is shoved into the lane, and the only courses of action are to swerve out of the way and damage property or drive straight through and risk killing the pedestrian, almost any human being will risk the property over the person. This implies a deep, underlying ethical/moral imperative to preserve life over property. Allowing a child to starve is clearly less ethical than allowing a baker to loose profits on a piece of bread. The true question is at what point does the line lie on the spectrum of "at risk of death" -- "in extreme discomfort but not at risk of death" -- "arbitrarily feel like eating bread" at which stealing becomes less ethical than going without bread.
You assume a false continuum of logic between the immediacy of preventing starvation and the ethicality of eating unnecessary food outside the practical ability to share it with someone more needy. If you had a starving kid under your desk (what's he doing down there anyway?) you would have a reason to feel bad.

 

[djzalzer]

Assuming the preservation of human life is an utmost ethical imperative your argument falls apart. If a starving child starves to death in order to satisfy a property right, and the preservation of life is more important than the preservation of property (as implied by almost any decision by any human being when posed with the situation in a direct fashion) then that code of ethics is violated. As an example, if a person is driving a car, and a pedestrian is shoved into the lane, and the only courses of action are to swerve out of the way and damage property or drive straight through and risk killing the pedestrian, almost any human being will risk the property over the person. This implies a deep, underlying ethical/moral imperative to preserve life over property. Allowing a child to starve is clearly less ethical than allowing a baker to loose profits on a piece of bread. The true question is at what point does the line lie on the spectrum of "at risk of death" -- "in extreme discomfort but not at risk of death" -- "arbitrarily feel like eating bread" at which stealing becomes less ethical than going without bread.
You assume a false continuum of logic between the immediacy of preventing starvation and the ethicality of eating unnecessary food outside the practical ability to share it with someone more needy. If you had a starving kid under your desk (what's he doing down there anyway?) you would have a reason to feel bad.

Why is the preservation of human life the utmost moral imperative? I never thought of that.

Allowing a child to starve is clearly less ethical than allowing a baker to loose profits on a piece of bread.

Why?

Also, theft and charity are two very different subjects.  Since the person driving the car would rather the person in the street live than they have a car, it is their charitable choice.  You can't deny yourself a right.  It's not an imperative... it's a choice.

 

[___]

I wasn't speaking of the driver's car, that's presumably going to get damaged anyway. I was speaking of another person's property, which in the hypothetical situation would get damaged if the driver swerves to avoid the pedestrian, in which case he is making an ethical choice, not a charitable choice.

As to the former, the preservation of human life is the utmost moral imperative by basic instinct for most people. That doesn't make it an absolute or a constant, and that doesn't make it logically correct, but when speaking in terms of common ethics I believe it to be true. If you want a logical argument, here it is: personal property cannot exist without a person - if there are no human beings there is no property, only objects of no special significance. If without human life there are no property rights, then preservation of property rights is contingent on preservation of life and thus the higher moral imperative in a situation where there must be a choice between the two. Killing, or acting in a fashion that will directly result in another's death, in order to protect property is fundamentally flawed.

Working of course from the basic assumption that all human life holds equal value - if you think the beggar child is less intrinsically valuable than the baker then you may argue that the imperative to protect the right to the loaf of bread is greater because the loaf of bread belongs to a higher class of person whos rights wholly outweigh any of the lower class. That kind of cast system in itself violates fundamental property rights though, since those rights aren't equally distributed.

From a practical standpoint, preservation of human life makes sense. The contribution and potential of an individual can't be measured by his present status in free society - today's starving man may be tomorrow's brilliant inventor, or vice-versa. If life is extinguished arbitrarily for protection of property very little is gained by the property owner and very much is lost in terms of human potential. Maintaining a social net sufficient to preserve the health, well-being, and opportunity of all members of a society is not nearly as costly as a system where only a small class are allowed to flourish - even the privileged class suffers relative to its potential in a free and equal society. If you look at historical examples of feudal caste systems or modern dictatorships, the wealthy by privilege often have a lower quality of life compared to individuals in free societies. A person in a free society is given the baseline of health, education, and social opportunity necessary to do what he wishes with his life (at least in theory) - he is welcome to develop or squander his potential, and those who choose to develop themselves contribute to society as a whole through the product of their work, benefitting themselves as well as the wealthy and established who bear the cost of the social net. Most of the conveniences and delights wealthy people enjoy could not have existed if the people who invented and manufactured them had only the options their parents could afford out of pocket; health and education are expensive. It's nice to believe in some absolute Objectivist ideal where the wealthy, through enlightened self-interest, develop others through philanthropy and charity rather than through involuntary contribution enforced by the state but unfortunately a long history of evidence of the behavior of the privileged classes in different societies proves time and time again that they do not tend to do so.

If that all sounds like a tangent, it comes back around to to the bread loaf and the starving boy: a society that lets the child starve to save the baker's profits lets many people starve to protect the property rights of the few, either in cynical disregard or in the vain hope that the baker chooses to give the bread away for free, knowing that the child has some small chance of contributing to his own wealth and comfort later in life. In doing so it inadvertently harms itself as a whole and harms each individual by depriving them of the benefit of human potential and a broader number of people who can participate in society and the market; if nothing else the child may grow up to be a productive member of society and a productive member of society is a market participant who capitalizes resources and spends that capital in the market, contributing to its total volume.