But we do "instinctually" do good things for other people, most particularly within whatever we consider out "in-group" to be.
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Do you remember, or do you not? Turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbor is NOT about an in group. half of the parables Jesus told were about loving the outcast, the Gentile, the sinner. ANYONE can love an in-group. That's not morality.
LOL!!!
That's right. ANYONE can love members of their in group, which indicates that there is an inborn aspect to morality.
All Jesus was doing was trying to get people to expand the size of their in-group. That is, of course, in sharp contrast to what Yaweh directed his people to do. Yaweh was all about having "his chosen people" (a small, select in-group) exterminate or enslave the out-groups.
"Why do we have morality?" and "What is moral?" are two very different questions. The first is a very interesting question that is accessable to scientific inquiry. The second is philosophical and ethical in nature.
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For the sake of this converstion, I don't think we need to dwell on what is or is not moral.
Agreed, so that means that your objection, "We can't even agree on what is moral, so it isn't worthwhile studying why we have a moral sense at all." is retracted yes?
This makes no sense to me. It isn't a matter of competition, exactly, but of using the method of inquiry that is the most reliable at discovering useful and verifiable truths.
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So, you want to scientifically discover what is moral?
No. As I explained, science can't do that.
What science can do, however, is figure out why we are moral and how morality impacts people's lives. These discoveries are the "useful and verifiable truths" I was referring to. What philosophers come up with regarding "what is moral?" are not verifiable, and not always useful. That's the problem with philosophy. Anybody can just make one up using any justification they like.
Part social rules and part hard-wiring.
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Come on, would you respect a person who told you that they were moral because it was hard-wired into them, or because society wanted them to be? Lucky you.
I don't even understand what this is supposed to mean.
And notice that I said "part social rules
and part hard-wiring". You changed my statement to; " social rules
or hard-wiring."
Morality allows us to live together in peace and cooperation, and that is a evolutionary survival advantage. By "us", I am referring to our "in-group", however small or large we decide to make it.
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Hm. Cooperation allows us to live together in harmony. We could harmoniously cooperate to do what was immoral. I don't believe that morality is dependant on a group.
Morality is
determined by groups.
That is why we see that moral values differ across cultures and have changed over time within cultures.
Morality is relative, and always has been. There is no absolute morality. Or, rather, there is no way of determining what that absolute morality is if it exists. The result is the same as if there were no absolute morality.
why do you think they must be mutually exclusive? Don't you think that understanding the basis and extent of the evolutionary origins of behavior might help us live better?
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I think that morality concerns what we do NOW, regardless of what got us to this point.
My husband is a scientist and currently studies how people learn. It turns out that most people consistently misunderstand certain scientific concepts in the same way. We make quite predictable comprehension mistakes, in other words.
The research that he is doing is intended to eventually be used to develop better ways to teach those scientific concepts, because if we understand the why we have those particular "mental blocks", we can figure out ways to compensate for them when we teach those concepts people find difficult and non-intuitive.
If we apply your logic to this situation, we shouldn't bother trying to identify or understand why people generally have trouble with certain concepts and we should just concern ourselves with the way we teach those concepts NOW.
In other words, applying your logic, you also shouldn't believe that we can improve our teaching methods through greater understanding of how people learn.
Following woo-woo guidelines doesn't help us understand, though.
Hell, all you are doing is following social rules that happen to have a supernatural parent attached to them as a motivator.
"Don't misbehave otherwise you will make God sad" is barely different from "Don't misbehave otherwise you will make Mommy and Daddy sad."
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What exactly are you trying to understand?
Why do we have a moral sense? How does this moral sense manifest in people and how does it affect us as individuals and in groups? At what age does it seem to appear and how are people different in that regard, etc., etc., etc.
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What do you need to know so badly that hasn't been answered already in 'love thy neighbor'?
That isn't an answer to any of my questions. That is merely a directive.
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And how is one person's version of loving more woo woo than the next? What did Ma Theresa do wrong? Did she understand human nature, or did she not?
I don't understand what this is trying to convey.
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No one is talking about making God sad. Morality is about making ourselves sad.
That's not what I see in this thread, sorry.
That is just wrong. Being moral has everything to do with human social interactions. Human social interactions are the whole point of morals, in fact.
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No, I think that morality is not about others. It can be judged by others, and applied to others, but it is essentially the etiquette of the soul.
What is etiquette?
etiquette 1. conventional requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion.
It is still all about how we treat and behave around others.
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It is a thing that you can only do by looking to yourself, and discerning your own selfish and prideful side. If you look well to yourself, all of the rest will follow.
But morality and ettiquite are meaningless without other people around!
You aren't the least bit curious about why certain cultures and eras embrace entirely different moral beliefs, or why we have such a strong "in-group/out-group" connection to our morals, and why some people are able to resist following orders that go against their moral rules and other people simply comply, or why, when put into a prisoner/guard situation, almost everyone seems to fall into the roles?
I think there is a huge amount of knowledge to be gained in this area of study and it is sad that you don't seem to care to discover any of it.
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Let me know when the results of the studies come in, so that I may figure out how to live life as a good person. NATOR!!!! Do you really think we can wait around for curiousity and scientific enquiry? Morality is about how you live life now, as an ignorant person, as an uneducated person, as a HUMAN. It's not a science.
Sure it is about now, but when we know and understand better, we can do better. It is an ongoing process.
That doesn't mean we wait around until we know everything about where morality comes from, and I have no idea how you figured I was saying that from anything I've written.
What I am saying is that we should incorporate real knowledge about human behavior into our concepts of morality and how to teach them more effectively.
Relying on woo or philosophy exclusively means that anyone who is charismatic and promises heavenly rewards can get people to do all sorts of fucked up things in the name of morality.
Edited by nator, : No reason given.
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