Morality without god

What, precisely, does it mean to do good? More aptly, what such 'goods' are we obligated to do? And are these obligations moral or something else?My concern is the ability to understand not only moral soundness, but also non-moral (or super-moral?) notions like heroism.

Good is whatever, we think it is. As is harm. We individually and collectively know what it is, but it's subjective and relative. ie messy.But the Do no harm principle on it's own is too cold, too inhuman to be of much moral use.It tells us not to drown a man but does not give us a reason to save him from drowning.

Did you mean to have the comma? To me, good is flowing with the Holy Spirit, whether you believe in it or not. Harm is flowing with the other spirits.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

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Good is whatever, we think it is. As is harm. We individually and collectively know what it is, but it's subjective and relative. ie messy.

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But the Do no harm principle on it's own is too cold, too inhuman to be of much moral use.

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It tells us not to drown a man but does not give us a reason to save him from drowning.

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You are right, but I think your theoretical application or interpretation is erroneous. It is obviously subjective, but no more so than remedial mathematics. I don't really know what you mean by saying good is 'whatever we think it is' nor that we 'individually and collectively know what it is'. If this were true then it should not be possible for me to think any differently than you and there would then be no inquisitive function to moral prudence. We do not really know what other people want, we need to ask them. We can be guided by our knowledge of human nature and our own experience, and this will tend to be sufficient for most affairs, but the pure moral interest is in the thoughts of the moral agent. Perhaps the principle 'moral heuristic', or problem solving approach to moral dilemmas, then, is determining whether or not ones actions are perceived as in accord with the other's desires.On the other hand, we have the problem of moral obligations, like that illustrated by your drowning man example. I am wondering what the 'moral math' should look like. What classifies whether or not an action is a moral obligation or not? This might be seen by adding something to the drowning-man problem, say by introducing a danger to save the drowning man. The question might be where moral obligation ends and heroism begins. Maybe they overlap, but I suspect that moral obligation at least ends before heroism does.

That's why I say it is both subjective - my morality is different from everyone else's - and collective, the sum of our feelings as represented in our secular laws (mostly do no harm) and in our codes of behaviour taught by society and institution, family, religion, schools, work etc. (which include 'Do good')We can all think differently but our actions are conditioned by the society we live in and are brought up by. I suspect you're overthinking this and trying to be too mechanistic. Morality - or our sense of it - is an emotion. It's similar to love, anger etc - it can be seen in action using fMRI. It's partly instinct and partly learned. So some heroic actions are almost a reflex, certainly not a calculation.The teachers who protected their children in the recent shooting and were killed for it are heroines, but they're also simply human, doing what we would expect people to do.In fact the human instinct to protect and help is often so overwhelming that it results in really stupid, non-heroic, actions. At this time of year, it's usual for a few people to die in floods and storms. There's always someone who feels compelled to jump in to help and is killed as well. They just can't bear to stand on the river bank and watch helplessly even though they must know that there is no hope.The emergency services have to be trained hard out of their natural desire to help if it means endangering themselves.

Nope, typo :-) Yeh, well, I can't really help you there.Our sense of morality is simply another emotion which we are born with then trained to use. There's no requirement nor evidence for any supernatural interference.

The fact that people fail to act in a moral fashion says nothing about the existence of a method to determine what the moral fashion should be.From The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

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The term “morality” can be used either

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1. descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
a. some other group, such as a religion, or
b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or

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2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

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and

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The Natural Law tradition holds that all rational persons know what kinds of actions morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows.

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The age at which you yourself were mature enough to engage in sexual activity. The age at which the person understands the implications of such behaviour and can recognize if they are being exploited. So the age is not the determining factor and is different for different individuals. You are saying that none of the prisoners recognize that they have done wrong? That a murderer would not object to being murdered or a thief would not object to having his things stolen. I would say that that is not the case.

And yet no-one can describe the method we are supposed to use to determine the absolutely right answer. If you properly read the trolley problems you will see how quickly your ability to choose the 'right' answer fails you. So in paedophilia, morality is a series of subjective opinions and no single individual will come to the same conclusion about the answer. Therefore not an absolute.I doubt that my daughter will ever be old enough - her boyfriend seems to disagree with me.We also know this because different cultures come to differing answers by nominating an average age at different ages and at different times in our cultures - some to our mind disgracefully young. And, of course a real paedophile is totally convinced that HIS view is correct, not yours or mine.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

No, hopefully not true.The training is to try to minimize the risk and maximize the chance of success but an emergency responder often endangers himself.

Well, yes, obviously a fireman puts himself in danger at every fire, but he's trained to take calculated risks, not run heroically into a burning building in the hope of rescuing someone.Unlike this guy:
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&...Interesting too, to useMan drowns while attempting to rescueAs a search term in Google. People just can't help themselves, we've all got a stupid hero in us.

In the case of water rescue there is a priority of steps, throw, tow, (maybe row), go; but go is still there.

The moral math was worked out in Game Theory by that beautiful mind of Nash.Behavior that benefits us most is that behavior which benefits our species in general, and best assures our continued survival in a Reality determined to drive us to extinction.
All behaviors which tend to reduce the survival of the species are immoral because the prime instinct of our species is survival.Nash proved mathematically that humanity advances when the benefit to the whole group is the motivation of individual behavior, which seems common sense when explained that way.What he actually proved was that one's own chances for gain actually are better when one advances the gains of other as his firat consideration.Hmmm,...
That also sounds to reasonable a way to set up the problem, because a Win/Win works when our own interests can gather support from the larger society which also benefits.Nash won a Nobke Prize for common sense deduction, so it must have been because he phrased to matter to sound complicated:Nash got a Nobel prize,(in the field of economics, apparently - Adam Smith in particular), for showing that the strategy leading to the "best result for you" is frequently, if not always, a much lower probability than the strategy leading to the "best result for the group", and a cost benefit analysis leads to the combination of probability of success with perceived benefit as being highest with an appropriate group strategy rather than the purely individualistic one. Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.

I think it would take enormous guts to watch someone drown and not try to help - knowing it's hopeless. and you'd question yourself ever after.A while back my dad fell off a bridge into a shallow river, I ran like hell to get to him and I distinctly recall wondering whether I'd ruin my boots if I didn't take them off - made me pause for a micro-second before I jumped in.Weird how the mind works.

I'm not sure "guts" is the right word.

Morals are about making rules that limit the freedom of one's behavior to the effect that it can not hurt others since the Social Contract made between people found what is a Society formed together by them.Morals are a general principle between the members agreeing to live beneficially together, that they will stop behavior that hurts others because such behavior tends to divide the group trying to live beneficially together.Laws seem to arise because some people don't get that message.