Moral Judgments

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Imposing our sense of morality, on another culture I think is wrong, but I also think that it is wrong to sit by and watch people be subjected to horrific acts

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The whole concept of wrong is somewhat bizzare to me. To try to say what is morally wrong is about as straight forward as saying that something is "good". To see a man or a group of men cut off a woman's head and then film it and post it on the web would qualify as wrong in some minds but I don't think that it is wrong from any non-religious perspective. I think it's fair to say that I wouldn't want to be the woman in that position, but even if I was, was it wrong for them to do that to me? - No.Her biological elements will be recycled back in to the enviorment and be reused in some future action, and the energy from her corpse will be recovered by the same system. So from a quantitative measurement, no wrong was done, only a change in the state of some matter and energy. The same as when a star goes into a super nova state and explodes. No wrong is done, even if there were to be a planet similiar to ours that was destroyed in the process and an existing intellegent civilization ceased to exist in the process. This could very well have happened millions of times already to civilizations on other planets similiar to ours, but the actions themselves are meaningless.To me, when you look at the relevance of events like that on a grand scale and see the irrelevance of it with respect to the universe, then scaling it down to our own human level puts perspective on things. To subject a human or group of humans to supposedly "horrific" circumstances might qualify as a moral wrong in one persons inner universe of their brain's electro/chemical activity and the associated emotional byproduct phenomena. But on a qualitative scale compared to if our own Sun were to explode and our planet destroyed, there is no wrong. In fact, the elements producing the electro/chemical activity that is driving the observed behavior to behead someone is just as natural as the same type of electro/chemical activity compelling a person to drop a dollar into a Salvation Army Kettle.The same mechanics are involved for both actions, beheading and donating money. It's all perfectly natural. Now I personally would rather do the donating then the beheading, but that's just the difference with my electro/chemical mapping in my brain verses someone else. It just so happens - strictly by chance - that more humans share my particular brain mapping and by the simple law of mathmatics, we are in the majority. So as a thought phenomena byproduct, laws are created to limit certain behavior but it's all just phenomena.So to me, if I look at the world from a purely natural perspective, certain observed actions by humans are going to result in electro/chemical reactions within the unique mapping of my brain. The byproduct of which is thought and emotion. But to assign morality to any of my own electo/chemical activity in my brain would mean that there is a reason or method to my thinking. In reality, since the whole existance of my brain is simply a chance event and a culmination of many related and non-related accidents in our universe, then any phenomena such as intellectual perceptions would only be byproducts of brain activity.To elevate my thoughts any higher then meaningless byproduct energy would involve adding another entity into the equation which requires some type of religious addition that at the very least proposes an afterlife for humans that considers the actions in this life relevant to the situtation you end up in. But by meaningless, I mean relevant, because even though the thoughts and intellect are meaningless, you can observe actions and reactions happen in the enviorment because of the various thoughts and asscoiated actions. All are just natural events driven by chance though.

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This is the statement of your belief and clearly the only one you will respect.

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Not so. I said that if I look at the world from a purely natual perspective then this is what is relevant. I don't look down with distain at anyone who is dedicating their life for "the good" of whatever just because it's what they want to do. But does their own reason have any ultimate justification to say that it is right or wrong? Of course not. Because from a purely natural perspective, none exists.This is what the person was trying to answer and I replied acordingly. She said that it was not right to impose a moral code on someone but then imiediatly said that it was wrong to stand by and let these wrongs be committed. In order to say something is wrong morally, you must make a judgement. To make a judgement you must make a comparison. To make a comparision you must have a standard. So where do you get the standard? If you are going to get it from our own universe, from natural means - there is none. So you make your own, according to your own internal mapping of your brain.So for a person to dedicate their life to doing "good" as they see it. Fine, but from a natural perspective it means nothing. Like if two parents go away on vacation for a month and leave the house to their son. The instructions are "Clean your room every day". Now what if he cleans his room every day or just cleans it on the last day before they arrive back. Did it make a difference? No. The parent's arrival back is like our own universe. It goes on. Cleaning the room by their standards or his is like any other action. It has no ultimate morale value, it just goes on.Try to explain to me from a purely naturalistic perspective, how any action that you could do would be overall measurably good to the universe or overall measurably bad to it. Because if you can get to that point where your actions matter on that kind of scale, then you are geting to the point of developing a true morale code. From my perspective, no natural living creature can even approach that. So if you are searching for moral relevancy as to answer whether it is right to impose a moral code on someone else or not, from a purely natural perspective, the answer is it doesn't matter.This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 01-11-2005 10:54 AM

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Here is a thought wrench I'd like to throw into your machine... You say that there must be an afterlife in order to make life relevant. Why is it not possible that the importance is within the life you lead. Goodness and greatness lead to goodness and greatness here and now. And why does it have to be for yourself. What if your life is what leant something good to your God, or to your children, or to a friend?

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Good and greatness are subjective and so they don't lead to anything except more activity.I just read a story on MSN about the situation in Iraq. An Iraqi and a reporter caught a ride in a Taxi and were going to the Iraqi's house. The 2 Iraqi's were talking and the Taxi driver was bragging about the good he was doing in the country despite the American occupation. He would pick up women coming from the green zone and drive them back home but instead would slit their throats and toss the bodies by a soccer stadium. In his mind he was doing good. What about in your mind? Is your mind better than his? If so, why?From a natural perspective, any moral code or standard is going to be created with personal biases in it. I wish the whole world practiced morality - MY Morality!! But what if the world had to use the Lizard's morality. Well, murder would be wrong and stealing would be also, except for MP3's and hotel towels with cool logos. Charity would be mandatory and every time you passed by, everyone would have to slide the Lizard a Ten Spot. Now, I make it sound extreme to prove a point but every moral code out there is biased and everyone's is going to be at least slightly different because of the slight or major differences in our brain mapping between each human.So what is moral right and wrong? Or better yet, what has value? The animal rights perspective says that it is insane to be sympathetic to the oppressed people of the world yet look blindly at the slaughter houses where untold millions of cows are led in and killed just so you can score a burger. They put the value of the animal equal to the value of the human. Is the cow valuable? To the Earth, no. The pressence of the cows does nothing for or against the Earth's existance. Are humans valuable? No, the pressence of Humans does nothing for or against the existance of the Earth. Is the Earth valuable? No. The existance of the Earth does nothing for the existance of the Sun. Is the Sun valuable? No, it has no effect on our galaxy of 300 billion other stars. Is our galaxy valuable? No, it has no effect on our own galaxy cluster of several other billion galaxies. Is our galaxy cluster valuable? Probably not since it appears that there could be hundreds of billions of other galaxy clusters.What has value on that grand of scale is during the Big Bang there were and are 4 governing forces. The strong and weak nuclear force, magnatism and gravity. There is no fifth called morality. In fact, physisists are trying to find a sole unified force to explain the known 4. Again, morality is not found in the equaiton. So from a natural perspective, morality is a human phenomeneon and unmeasurable outside of human consciousness. To have a measurable code of morality would mean that human behavior has value which would mean that humans have value.From a natural perspective, different humans have value with repect to each other and so therefore the behavior of them is important. But since humans in general have no universal value from the natural perspective, there is no universal moral code found in the universe. Matter in general has value and there are physical laws that show this. Energy in general has value and there are physical laws that support this. But that's as far as it goes.To says that my goodness and the importance of the life that I lead will lead to goodness and greatness has as much relevance as how far I toss a pebble into a pile of pebbles on a beach of stone pebbles. It matters not where the pebble lands except maybe to the few surrounding pebbles where it lands as it's kinetic energy is momentarily transmitted through them. But to all the pebbles on the beach did it make a difference. No.

Hi Shaz,Sorry that I'm so late in replying to your post. My vocation in the military takes me out at the most unpredictable schedules, and when I'm not out deployed I have to spend time staying in shape to do the job and then give time to my family and it all piled up last week. So being a gub'ment employee, I have the holiday off so I can spend some time in the forum. As I get older, I have to spend more time in the gym to pay for my indulgences such as Hershey bars with almonds. I used to be able to eat them like a chain smoker and never gain an ounce but now if I look at an ad for one in a magazine I gain 2 pounds!

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No matter what justification one place’s on the beheading act though, in relation to the universe or her biological elements, the taking of her life without her consent is a violation of the basic rights.

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I see where you are coming from with your reply and your entire train of thought. You would make a good neighbor. But addressing the issue from a purly "natural " perspective like if you were to explain the formation of our Sun, then there is no such thing as "basic rights". This is because there is no definable equation on how to repeat basic rights without bringing in human consciousness and judgements and both are just phenomena resulting from the electro/chemical activity of the human brain.If I display the simple equation of 3 + 6 + 5 = X. Solve the equation and you are only dealing with integers, then everyone in the world would solve the equation the same exact way. No margin for swaying. If you ask how our solar system was formed, you will get similiar conclusive answers all based on observable occurances and sound mathmatical calculation. No margin for swaying. If you drop an object from the sky, the results are the same if a Muslim drops it, a Christian, a Buddist, a Rhamtha follower or an Aethist. No margin for swaying.But when you talk about basic rights, you are envoking one of two possibilites. The first is you are trying to merge the phenomena of human thought with the absoluteness of science. This doesn't work because it requires you to weight human thought as having some value and from the natural perspective, it has none. No human or for that matter any intellegent thought was required for the universe to come into existance, for the solar system to form, evolution to occur, or humans to exist, or any other macro scale process. Since human thought or even human existance has no value or purpose in the universe, but is just a chance occurance of the universe itself, then any conclusions from human thought are also of no value from a natural perspective.The second possibility is that you are recognizing the existance of a being outside of our space/time dimension who would place a concept of wrong and right and basic decency as valueable. The concept of right/wrong only makes sence as a universal concept (which is what this thread is trying to descide) if there is such a Being/Creator who possesses this attribute, because the physical universe from a natural perspective does not require this to explain itself. As humans, we find this right/wrong compass the biggest issue we deal with in life. Aethesists describe it as "basic rights" and religions call it sin. So to an Aethist, you violate a basic right when you do something like my be-heading example. What is the macro - ramifications for this type of violation? The death of the victim and maybe the death of the perpetrator through a judicial system, but basically their elements are recycled into the ecosystem and the Earth continues to revolve around the Sun for Billions of more years. No real meaning or consequence.To the religious, the Creator who is outside the boundries of our space/time dimmension, and who holds right/wrong in high value, great interest is taken in the committing of the sin. And because the value of right/wrong is outside the boundries of the physical world, so are it's ramifications. So the entire physical universe could disappear but the ramifications of the violation act could survive. And if the violation can survive, then so must the violator or it wouldn't make sence. A Creator who made a universe like ours is logical, creative, meticulous and thinks on a grand scale. So it would not be logical for the violator to just be destroyed and never exist again forever. For the right/wrong violation to be of interest to the Creator, the violator must then also have an eternal existance. To a being outside of the restraints of time, an action or judgement against a violator would not be logical if right after the judgement, the violator is terminated. If the Creator is eternal, so are the Creators attributes. The entire concept of basic right/wrong logically steps outside the boundries of space/time and matter and becomes an eternal attribute or element to the religious. It's because of the recognition that there is a universal right/wrong that points humans to the fact that there is a Being who exists outside of our space/time dimension.So to talk about right/wrong, basic rights and morals from the same perspective as you explain the formation of our world and humans themselves through chance and evolution has again been perplexing to me because it makes little sence. Yet I find the same posters who defend evolution (and they defend it from the natural perspective quite well and capable), chiming in on moral issues with the same degree of certainty in their dialect. But logic should hold that the people who defend evolution and chance creation would respond to any notion at all of right/wrong as a laughable excersise in futility, verses the scientifically provable such as matter and gravity.As I said in my first post to this thread, once you recognize that there might be a universal right/wrong concept, then the existance of a Being outside of our space/time dimension becomes appearant.Sorry for all the edits, but spelling is a curse to the one who choses to type.This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 01-17-2005 07:57 AMThis message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 01-17-2005 08:01 AMThis message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 01-17-2005 08:09 AM

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To test this, I could ask you to turn on a hot plate and tell a toddler with no prior experience of burn to put their hand on it. If I was to ask this though, it would be a confliction of rights and mores, i.e. demonstrating by example - knowingly inflicting harm to one who has no concept of the likely ramifications - my more: to harm a child is wrong - your more may equally be that the idea of harming a child is repugnant. If we reversed our mores though, to have no regard for the rights of the child, and tested the proposed idea, then we would be exerting our mores over the rights of the child, and subsequently we would be wrong. However if I turned on the hotplate and put my own hand on it, there is nothing right or wrong, it just is, albeit possibly stupid.

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I disagee with this application of morals as you state. In reality, from a natural perspective there is little difference between the energy used by one atom to destroy another as there is energy from one human enticing another into doing something destrutive.In a particle accelerator, the particles are acted on by energies outside of their own control as part of their enviorment. So they are sped up and then smash into other particles, destroying them and we collect the data. No moral wrong doen by the particles.In the same way, the adult as a more complex particle, is acted upon by energies in it's enviorment and the result is an action that entices the child to touch the hot plate. Neither situation was wrong, but just energy being transmitted through matter with cause and effect.From a natural perspective, the health of the child has no more value then the state of the particle that was destroyed because the energy from both will be fully recovered in the Big Crunch.What we are doing from a natural perspective is witnessing energy flow from us to entice the child and that energy has a cause and effect relationship to make the child's hand touch the hot plate. But the individual rights of the child did not come in to the equation to allow it to happen. It was all just the natural flowing of energy, be it electro/chemical in the brain or the usage of ATP in the muscles to make the movement.To suggest that a basic right was violated suggests that another factor outside of matter/energy is at work but is unseen or unmeasurable by instrumentation. If so, and the act WAS a violation, it suggests that something is wrong or broken in the enviorment, outside of the visable matter/energy engine that we call reality.