And if the other person is not deeply hurt by the action it is both moral and immoral at the same time according to your approach, correct
I don't know how you managed to get this from me saying
I see no reason to regard the adultery as immoral.
To answer your question: no.
One. There is absolutely no way to judge what is actually moral or immoral. Two. It demonstrates beyond any doubt that morality is strictly a human invention that does not actually have meaning in reality.
Morality derives from our learning, our culture and our evolved brains. Humans didn't invent our own brains, so it is not strictly a human invention.
Reality will let not allow a right or wrong, subjective or objective. It's a contrived ideology that does not give biological processes, adultery, or otherwise more meaning. How will you avoid this obvious conclusion?
I'm not avoiding the conclusion. In so far as I understand you meaning, it
is my conclusion.
Hence, morality doesn't give more meaning to the animal kingdom , when they commit what you have fashioned as adultery.
I have not claimed otherwise.
I give meaning to things.
You give meaning to things. Morality doesn't give meaning to things on its own.
It just means that as a human you've decided to call it that, correct? It doesn't really exist. Hence no morality actually
To continue answering questions I have answered a dozen times - that is correct. It doesn't exist outside of our minds. It does exist inside minds. I say that means it exists. You are free deny the existence and contents of your own mind. Morality is not objective, is my point.
I mean , it is possible to establish somethings rationally in reality, correct?
Correct. At some point, you might get around to establishing rationally that morality exists in 'reality' - ie., not just in our minds.
Telling me that my perception of an artist is good and your perception is not, is subjective, is like saying, our perceptions aren't really real and don't matter anyway.
No, it's saying that our perceptions/opinions about our perceptions differ.
At best there is no way of determine which of us is right or wrong. So how could my perceptions of him be anything but an imagination, since there's no standard of what is a musical standard
That's what I'm saying, yes. With the proviso that imagination doesn't mean created entirely with volition. But yes, it is all in our minds as a result of our brains interacting with our environment.
Which means you are desperately trying to give meaning and explanation to something that doesn't exist in the first place.
I am not trying to give meaning to an objective morality.
I think you just hit the nail on the head, what do you mean by the expression Real Way
I was quoting you: "You have no way of demonstrating in any
real way adultery is right or wrong"
For now I'll ignore the idea of a social contract as you describe it, because we can both agree that's made up
I actually said 'social construct'.
I suppose that Socrates being a Gentile and having lived before the advent of Christ and without the law of Moses, would have had more of an excuse for believing what he did. You, not so much. This is also why nearly 4000 years later, Jesus ideologies are prevelant and not Socrates. Judeo-Christianity conforms and explains what we and feel in the human make up. Socrates is someone you study in classroom. Christ is someone you apply to everyday living
No.
Well lot's more running in circles. I may as well try and move us forward with some actual philosophy rather than you just saying 'but your idea of morality is subjective which I reject' in a variety of different ways.
We want a sense a meaning. Just about everybody wants it. But what is meaning? This seems important to discuss, but you've given precious little time to the subject. The likes of Plato and Aristotle et al (and before you write them off as pre-Christian or without the Law, I should point out that Christianity is a neo-Platonic philosophy), had the idea that everything has an
essence. You've hinted strongly towards this position yourself.
Essence
A property or set of properties that are necessary...or essential (get it?)...for a thing to be what it is. There are many types of knife - they may have long blades, serrated blades, plastic handles, bone handles...but they are all knives. The shape of the blade, the material of the handle are not
essential to the definition - but a knife without a blade....is not a knife. The same might be said of chairs or...well so the Platonists argue - anything. There is some abstract 'ideal Chair/knife' and all the things we encounter in the world are 'reflections' of this ideal form.
In your view the 'ideal' form exists in the infinite wisdom of God, at least with morality, but the Platonists argued it is this way for everything - that they exist in some perfect - divine realm that serves as a reference of comparison that we use to know that a knife is a knife not a spoon or a chair.
This was amusingly put by Monty Python:
quote:
Half a bee, philosophically
Must, ipso facto, half not be
But half the bee has got to be
A vis-a-vis its entity, d'you see?
But can a bee be said to be
Or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee
Due to some ancient injury?
So the idea with morality is that our 'essential properties' precedes our existence, and to be good, is to adhere to our essence. In your case, as understood, conceived, defined or created by God. The take away here is that this essence gives us a purpose: you were born to be a certain thing, live a certain way.
This is known as
quote:
Essentialism is the view that for any specific entity there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identity and function. In Western thought the concept is found in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Platonic idealism is the earliest known theory of how all things and concepts have an essential reality behind them (an "Idea" or "Form"), an essence that makes those things and concepts what they are.
quote:
Plato was one of the first essentialists, believing in the concept of ideal forms, an abstract entity of which individual objects are mere facsimiles. To give an example; the ideal form of a circle is a perfect circle, something that is physically impossible to make manifest, yet the circles that we draw and observe clearly have some idea in common this idea is the ideal form. Plato believed that these ideas are eternal and vastly superior to their manifestations in the world, and that we understand these manifestations in the material world by comparing and relating them to their respective ideal form. Plato's forms are regarded as patriarchs to essentialist dogma simply because they are a case of what is intrinsic and a-contextual of objects the abstract properties that makes them what they are.
quote:
Classical essentialists claim that some things are wrong in an absolute sense, for example murder breaks a universal, objective and natural moral law and not merely an advantageous, socially or ethically constructed one.
Existentialism
But this presupposes that essences do exist in some abstract or divine form prior to us 'having' them. There is no evidence of this. What if instead, we exist
first and meaning comes later? This was Sartre's question to the world. Instead of being born with a purpose, a meaning - it's up to us to determine those things. As Sartre put it: "existence precedes essence".
This isn't exclusively an atheistic idea - just ask Sren Kierkegaard. He's very difficult to pin down, but theistic existentialists believe God exists, but he doesn't create the meaning of my life, the universe or...anything.
Thus, say existentialists, there is no real actual intrinsic objective purpose or meaning to life or...anything.
Absurdity
quote:
"... in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment. For to hope in the possibility of help, not to speak of help by virtue of the absurd, that for God all things are possible — no, that he will not do. And as for seeking help from any other — no, that he will not do for all the world; rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself — with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be." -- Kierkegaard
And thus we arrive at
The Absurd.: The search for meaning in a meaningless world. There are basically two real solutions to humans when they face The Absurd:
- Religion: Kierkegaard suggests replacing The Absurd with The Irrational, the unevidenced.
- Acceptance: Albert Camus suggests that by accepting The Absurd we gain freedom. This freedom allows us to revolt against The Absurd while accepting its inevitability, and finding contentedness with personal meaning.
Since there is no reason for...anything...there are no absolutes to abide by. No rules, no justice, no fairness. Without rules, without guidelines for our actions, we are forced to design our own moral code. This is freedom, but it is rather scary.
quote:
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
quote:
Those who appeal to the wisdom of the people — which is a sad wisdom — find ours sadder still. And yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as Charity begins at home or Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and he’ll do you homage? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this effect, and they all mean much the same — that you must not oppose the powers that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are told of some more or less repulsive action, say How like human nature! — it is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is — is it not? — that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. -- Sartre
Sartre spoke of a pupil who was in a moral dilemma. He could stay at home and care for his elderly mother, making a great and direct positive impact on the life of one individual. Or he could go to war (in WWII) and contribute some small amount of effort towards the moral good of defeating a great evil, possibly never seeing his mother again who may well die without his presence.
quote:
If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her — my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go. But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, I love my mother enough to remain with her, if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
quote:
There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his mother — that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity as his moral foundations — would be making an irresponsible choice, nor could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.
quote:
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do — any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
In summary: We can't know the 'right' course of action. A pre-defined moral system may lean us one way or another, but in too many important ways it cannot answer actual moral questions. The only answer then, is the answer we give when those questions are put upon us and we are forced by circumstance to choose an answer. To decide between reasons and say which we feel is more important. This is freedom, but as terrifying as freedom is, as comforting as slavery might appear, we are condemned to live it one way or another. It is our choices that make, that construct the answers to moral questions. Nobody can give an answer to a person facing a moral dilemma, they can only opine on the choices - the answer does not exist until the dilemma is answered by the person facing it. No
I understand that you don't
like the notion that we are so free, that morality is not, as it were, written in stone, but such is the human condition. The question isn't whether or not you like it, it isn't even whether or not you accept it. The question is: is it true? You have not refuted the truth of this matter, only argued that constructed meaning and constructed morality isn't 'really real'. So be it. If that is the way of things, that is the way of things.
As you have conceded, I may well be able to explain why humans behave in 'moral' ways. I may well be able to explain why we tend to feel certain ways about behaviours and why we have disagreements over those ways.
You can't refute the truth of the existentialist conception of the human condition. So, all that remains is for you to accept that it might be the case. There is little more I can see to argue here:
I have 'actually given a reason for having a morality'
I have '{established}' any kind of morality for an Atheist or Secular Fundamental Humanist, or nonbeliever.'
Hopefully you see that you agree with me on all major points at this time and we can escape the circle of madness you've taken us on.
You can refuse to accept The Absurd. The human condition. And you can simply follow the paths and ideas someone else came up with without realizing they are as much an authority on the right path as you are or I am.
Your life has meaning: if you choose to assign that meaning. If your meaning is in following God that's the meaning you have chosen. You are as condemned in freedom as much as I am in rejecting that meaning. We have to choose.
But ultimately - if the world is going to have any of the things we (you and I) actually value like Justice, Goodness - we're going to have to put them there ourselves. Otherwise, those things won't exist.
Evolution: creating the subjective from the objective
But take heart: none of this exists as a vacuum of subjectivity. We are animals with brains that evolved for social cooperation. We are drawn towards moral action, though we can be conflicted with our personal needs and thus selfishness. We draw up mutual rules and punish those that break them. That's what we do. As free as we are, we are constrained by our biology towards certain tendencies. Our culture is something we cannot be entirely free of, our learning while it can be self-directed is mostly involuntary. So justice will exist, goodness will exist, because as well as buildings, and music and meals, creating social systems and rules and rewards and punishments is an objective fact of our existence as social primates. So it's not made up from nowhere, random and anarchic. We are motivated by our social nature towards certain types of solution - and together we can guide others towards solutions we feel are better and on the whole that's what we have done, imperfectly, with a certain definition of freedom, but that's the way of it.
Moralities exist. We make them. Like buildings they vary, but there are certain immutable rules that must be followed in creating them. The rules of how to build a building are not laid down by God. The rules of how to construct morality are not laid down by God. The laws of nature provide the constraints, we use our minds to construct them as best we can within those constraints. Sometimes our buildings fall over because we didn't take something into account. That's the way it goes.
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