Morality without god

Which definition would you point to?

quote:

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conscience
   [kon-shuhns] Show IPA
noun
1.
the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action: to follow the dictates of conscience.
2.
the complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.
3.
an inhibiting sense of what is prudent: I'd eat another piece of pie but my conscience would bother me.

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Say that you are at the art gallery and you see a piece of abstract art that you like. I ask you why you like it and you say "I don't know, I just like it." I am using desire in the sense that it is the thing that you most want to do out of your available options. Like when you decide to take some awful tasting medicine instead of remaining sick. The benefit comes from the understanding that being kind is beneficial to the person who is being kind. If it is the correct perspective then the benefit comes from having the correct perspective. If you are willing to do something then you have made a calculation and decided that the action is the most preferred. You might say 'I wish that I didn't have to do this' but in the end you decide that it is the most beneficial course of action.Unmotivated action like the unmotivated decay of an alpha particle? Nonsense. If you were born in rural Afghanistan and raised by the local mullah do you think that you would have turned out to be a catholic?When you appreciate that the cave dwelling luddite is the same creature as you who has had different inputs it makes it harder to drop a bomb on his head and (abe; easier to)reach the conclusion that maybe he needs a pamphlet on personal hygiene instead. Yeah I guess it does sound a little like that. That is not the way I meant it.I am surprised by the resistance to this idea. I expected something like 'Well obviously we are motivated by our desires." So what driver do you assign to acts of kindness?Edited by Dogmafood, : No reason given.

I was not unable to point to it. I pointed directly at it. Your sense of reciprocity and fairness. Your grandmother deserves to be happy more than you deserve to play video games. You came to that conclusion.My point is, though, that yes, it must be in there somewhere. No you can't. Whatever you do in the end was the most preferred action. Unless you are mad or have a tumour or something and even then it is the most preferred action as generated by a fucked up brain. You knew it going in. What they did in kindergarten was to reinforce that fact. To increase the child's conscious awareness that kindness has many more benefits than are immediately apparent. It all comes down to the lesson that it really is better for you if you consider the other person at the first accounting of benefits. That sharing your candy has more value over time than the immediate benefit of eating all or your candy now. It is still all about achieving maximum personal benefit. Whatever it is about the human brain that recognizes that sensation as being uncomfortable is the mechanism that gives rise to apparently altruistic behaviour. As no alternatives have been offered I will continue to call it your conscience. I am not disputing that you can act in such a way that causes more benefit for others than for yourself (even though all benefits are not always apparent). I am saying that at the root of all of your actions is some perceived benefit to yourself. Even if the benefit to yourself is less than it is to others it is the benefit to self that motivates the action.

If you take our moral sense to be whatever maximizes perceived personal benefit then it does not change. Our behaviour varies widely but the goal remains the same. Even if the brain is all messed up by chemical imbalance or physical damage it still tries to act in accordance with it's perceived maximum personal benefit. Always.It seems to me that it is a page one type of essential quality for all things that can be said to have a will to survive. All those willing to face the music instead of dancing to their own tune.

I would explain it by saying that our sense of the importance of the tribe to our own survival is very strong. That our sense of place in the tribe is very strong.In the extreme case there is a point where the importance of the tribe exceeds the importance of the self but only when there are no alternatives. It is still the most preferred course of action for the individual. The guy who jumps on the grenade does not consciously think about it, he just does it. His conscience demands it.It is phenomenal to me that our brains will actually do this and throw our bodies on a grenade. That we can come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to die.In the case of the burning child most of us would be compelled to save them. Some would try and some wouldn't. The amount of guilt that you would feel for not having tried varies by person. The risk would be rewarded with an enormous sense of having done the right thing but they would not be consciously calculating that reward nor would they be consciously calculating the resulting misery of having let them burn. The calculation is made instantaneously and without awareness which to me means that it is wired in there. Again varying from person to person depending on their experience. If being kind is not eventually beneficial to the actor then why else would they do it? What other possibilities are there?

No. You can't.

Of course the answer is dependant on your definition of 'best thing' which will necessarily refer to the self which will also require a definition. If the goal is propagation or fecundity of your genes then your own continued existence is not the ultimate goal. This requires that we consider ourselves as a separate entity from our genes. Not just the phenotype/genotype distinction but that the phenotype is something other than the sum of the genes. Is that what you are saying? If it is good for our genes then it is good for us. This is not to say that we do not possess some detrimental genes like the ones that give us cancer but taken as a whole thing. If you are suggesting otherwise then you need to elaborate.I would also point out that you are talking about some fairly rare occurrences. In 99.99161874369 % () of all actions we can easily see that people act in such a way as to maximize their personal benefit. I suspect that it is actually 100 % of the time and that it is only on some rare occasions when it appears to be otherwise.The topical point is that the interests of the self are always at the top of the scale, that is used by the self and generally referred to as the conscience, to make moral judgements. If there is such a thing as absolute morality it is built on this foundation by evolutionary processes. Any concept of God that includes moral direction is a cultural reinforcement of an instinctive tendency. Again, if the goal is propagation, then it is obvious how it can be seen as beneficial to the dead individual.

No doubt that we do things that are ultimately detrimental to ourselves and our genes are the cause but it is the self that carries out the action. The motivation is still one of perceived personal benefit. That is perceived by the mind or the self either consciously or subconsciously. It sounds like you are describing a symbiotic relationship between our genes and ourselves. A relationship between two cognizant entities.Could you provide a definition of personhood so that I know what you are talking about. It sounds like dualism to me. The idea that you are something other than the sum of your parts. Whose isn't? In a general sense. Sure, there are bachelors who consciously decide not to have children but if life can be said to have a single goal then surely it is to propagate. In the grenade scenario it is not so much a case of live or die but rather a case of imminent death. I am going to die. The other people with me are going to die. If I jump on the grenade and save the others, what will be the reaction of the rest of the tribe toward any remaining kin? (abe; This is beneficial and important if the genetic line is the same thing as the self. If it isn't then I don't know what the fuck is going on.)Again I will point out that you have to go to the extreme and unusual case to provide an example that only appears to be motivated by something other than selfishness. I wonder how many real world cases of this behaviour you could actually produce. I don't dispute that it happens but when it does we all gasp admiringly and wonder if we would have had the courage to do the same. It usually doesn't happen. I appreciate that there is a lot to be learned at the extreme edges of our behaviour but you shouldn't lose sight of the other 99% of our behaviour.We are talking about the general behaviour of our species and not the extreme case. The grenade scene is an extreme manifestation of our common tendency to recognize the importance of the tribe which has proved beneficial for our survival. I maintain that it is always the case. I would equate it with the will to survive. Our moral behaviour is completely integral with and a result of our most basic instincts of survival and propagation. It is not some magic quality beamed in from control central. Edited by Dogmafood, : No reason given.

It seems to me that what Christ preached was simply the expansion of our sense of tribe. He recognized that kindness and the golden rule are the wellspring of happiness, contentment and a better quality of life. Still, it is all aimed at maximizing benefit for the individual. My life will be better if your life is better.If you consider the moral behaviour as recorded in the bible it is clear that it evolved over time. The sense of tribe was always there. Long before we could tell stories about what was good and what was bad we had a sense about what those things were. The perceived threats to the tribe change and the acceptable reactions to those threats change.Through it all is the immutable core of self preservation. This is the foundational pillar of everyone's morality. Each individual's methods are different and change. Each individual perceives benefits in a different way based on their information and experience. But each individual has the same goal of self preservation and maximum personal benefit be they selfish or 'not'.Christ's brilliant message was that we are all part of the same tribe.

Yes I agree. I don't think that we will ever force the concept of God out of the realm of possibilities. There will always be some space to accommodate his retreat. We will know God when we know everything that he is not.However, when I understand the ToE and it's time span and I watch as it provides explanation after explanation for the intricacies of our behaviour. When I accept the relative age and size of the universe. After it becomes clear that real knowledge is ours for the finding. Then it becomes clear that the bible is just a collection of what we knew at that point in time. Simply what we wrote down first in an effort to combat the absurdity of life.It seems to me that the God of the bible is a result of our morality. Again, a cultural reinforcement of the fact that cooperation is beneficial. I think the real question is 'would there be a God without morality?' and I think that the answer is no.Now it may be that our morality is evidence for God's existence but that looks like a loop to me.Edited by Dogmafood, : change it to that.

I think that it is best left as it is. As Dr A points out, if a person is not able to do the heavy lifting of moral calculus then they are not capable of being a moral person.Our will to survive is the most fundamental behavioural element that we all share. That is why the golden rule works so well. In referencing the self we ensure that our behaviour is both fair and acceptable. This doesn't try to wash away cultural differences but takes advantage of the fact that we are all basically driven by the same motives.

Well no, we haven't been around that long, perhaps 200k yrs but the bible has only been around for about, what? 1700 yrs. The observation concerning time is relevant because it shows that we were developing our morals for quite a while before God made an appearance. No doubt he was there before we wrote him down but not much before and certainly not before our sense of right and wrong.If there is a visible mechanism and driver for the development of our morality then I don't see how that supports the existence of the God in the bible. I agree that there could be a God and he could have made us this way but it seems like such an unnecessary assumption. I think that you can know objectively because if we take away the entire concept of God we still have our morals. If we take away our morals, our sense of right and wrong, then there would be no such thing as God. How could there be? Well I disagree. There is no question that the idea of God serves as a strong reinforcement of moral behaviour. There is no doubt that God showed up long after the moral behaviour was well established. There is no doubt that God has changed since we first started writing about him. The loop only comes after we invent God and project him back to the beginning.

No. In a life and death situation the calculations are mostly subconscious. They are hard wired. If you could hit the pause button and consider the ramifications of jumping on the grenade how often do you think it would happen? I'll bet that the genetic connection would have to be much stronger.I would try to save my child from a burning building or your child for that matter. I would maybe try to save you but maybe not. I would certainly go for your child under more threatening circumstances than I would go for you. The same reason that I might hold open the door for someone. Empathy. I would sure want someone to come and save me. This is why the golden rule works.

The preferred flavour of ice cream is not the issue. The issue is the freedom to choose the flavour that you prefer. That decision is made by referring to the fact that you appreciate that freedom and therefore should extend it to everyone else.Any quantification of 'good' is ultimately made by referring to the self. Considering what the other person wants is right because you appreciate it when others do it for you.It is all about you and you should embrace the fact because it is the only morsel of significance that you have . By you I mean us of course.

I can demonstrate how and why the God concept snuck into our brains by natural processes. You can only make the claim that he put himself there. While I can not prove that he didn't it seems to me that your position requires an assumption that mine does not.