quote:The issue is that whenever you are asked for a naturalistic explanation of morality, you start talking about empathy. This makes me feel that you have concluded that loving others is good. Perhaps it is you who is misrepresenting science.
I am not "representing science" when I conclude that loving others is good. I certainly incorporate scientific knowledge in my understanding of human nature and natural tendencies, but my moral values are not derived solely from science.
They come partly from hard-wiring, and partly from society.
[qs]Gosh darn it, you just messed up again! You are using fairness and reciprocity as examples of how higher primates have moral codes. Science can not determine that this is moral, right?[/quote]
Again, you show that you do not understand the difference between "Is it moral?, and "Is it a morality?".
Science most certainly can determine if the monkeys have a moral sense, whatever form that moral sense takes.
Science cannot make value judgements about if the particular moral values they demonstrate are good or not. They can show the effects of these moral values on the group and on individuals. They can show if they are beneficial or detrimental to the group or individuals.
Of course, the effects of such advanced higher brain abilities as reciprocity and fairness are are likely to be beneficial to the group, otherwise they wouldn't have been selected for.
quote:The most you can be doing is saying that intelligence produces codes. Without the adjectives for moral behaviour that you have used, it is impossible to determine if lesser animals are producing codes as well.
Look, ana, higher primates are very, very much like us in many of their social interactions and constructions. I think that you are making claims about that which you don't have the knowledge to justify making those claims.
Brush all of the evidence aside and declare what you will. It doesn't make the evidence go away.
quote:Although I understand that science can't answer what is moral, I have seen enough documentaries to know that scientists DO start with the premise that compassion is so.
Wow. You base your claim about how scientists follow the tenets of scientific inquiry on your assesment of nature documentaries meant to entertain the public.
Do you think that TV shows are more interested in getting you emotionally involved in what you are watching or in providing as sober and academic presentation of the evidence?
Sheesh.
Makes sense.
quote:I was hoping to hear 'all men were evolved equally and endowed by nature with inalienable rights' but oh well.
Why would you hope to hear that sort of thing?
quote:I am content to know that something woo woo makes sense even to atheists.
It doesn't come from woo-woo, though.
It makes sense from a logical and "enlightened self-interest" sense.
Injustice and war are highly unpleasant and not conducive to health or contentment for me and my loved ones, and I can see that other people believe that it is detrimental to them as well. I can see how constant war and injustice is detrimental to our species' survival.
So, being good to each other is a better way to go.
Science cannot make value judgements about if the particular moral values they demonstrate are good or not. They can show the effects of these moral values on the group and on individuals. They can show if they are beneficial or detrimental to the group or individuals.
Well I guess that is where we don't speak the same language.
When I think of morality, I am thinking specifically of things which we have made a determination of goodness upon. I am not thinking of fashions or modes, habits or acceptable slang terms. I am not thinking of ways of communication, or of what is considered polite. I am thinking about what is good.
It's not that you are wrong or I am right, but I say what I say because of how I see the connotation of a word.
I can not talk about monkey morality without the value judgment of goodness to go with it. I can merely say that monkeys seem to have social rules, and are compassionate. I have no idea how they feel about the goodness of their actions.
When I think of morality, I am thinking specifically of things which we have made a determination of goodness upon.
When I think of morality, I think of how we treat other people.
We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.
Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
Taking definition of faith as #2 below (in yellow):
When you remove arguments that are not based on proof, you are left with ones that are based on proof, logic, facts and guesses.
Facts are things that we can validate as being true, either by proof or by elimination of other possibilities (guesses). Thus it is a fact that the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old, as lesser ages have been eliminated as contenders, but it is still a guess that the world is 4.55 billion years old.
Guesses can (and do) range from wild out of the ballpark guesses (typical of creationist "rebuttals" to evidence that contradicts their belief) to high formulated guesses based on evidence and falsification of previous guesses: theories.
Note that denial of evidence is not faith:
The existence of contradictory evidence invalidates any argument that ignores it.
When I think of morality, I think of how we treat other people.
Right. That is fine.
Now, many animals are very social. All social animals MUST have interaction, obviously. That means that all social animals are treating each other 'well' in so far as the other members of the group are happy and proliferating. The social interactions of finches are constant, they are devoted to each other, and hate being alone. There are benefits to this behaviour, as far as safety, warmth, energy expenditure, and food finding. They will alert each other to a new found supply of food. They will constantly chirp to 'home' a straying bird.
Very moral of them.
As I see it, you may think about social interactions all day and night, but moral behaviour is one SPECIFIC kind of social interaction based on the premise of Right and Wrong. It is not a nickname for all social behaviour in general.
Therefore, scientists can not be saying that some animals are moral without using some principles of morality, i.e., determinations of what is good and evil, which we have created for ourselves.
Exhibit A:
Wiki writes:
Morality (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") refers to the concept of human action which pertains to matters of right and wrong ” also referred to as "good and evil" ” used within three contexts: individual conscience; systems of principles and judgments ” sometimes called moral values ”shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community; and codes of behavior or conduct morality
You can see that what we consider moral is simply a value shared within a culture or a community. It is impossible to escape the fact that, when it comes to monkeys, apes really, all we can do is note that they share the same actions which we ourselves consider moral.
Exhibit B.
The parsimonious consideration of research into food sharing among chimpanzees suggests that the type of social regulation found among our closest genetic relatives can best be understood as a form of morality. Morality is here defined from a naturalistic perspective as a system in which self-aware individuals interact through socially prescribed, psychologically realistic rules of conduct which provide these individuals with an awareness of how one ought to behave. The empirical markers of morality within chimpanzee communities and the traditional moral traits to which they correspond are (1) self-awareness/agency; (2) calculated reciprocity/obligation; (3) moralistic aggression/blame; and (4) consolation/empathy
{I have to recheck the source there, sorry.}
Here we see that...and rightly so...chimps are being called moral because of predetermined things which we consider moral. I DO believe these things are moral, and therefore I have NO problem with science presupposing that they are moral. But just so that the record is straight, we need to know that moral determinations are being made by science.
abe...ok, I can see that if chimps are punishing or neglecting each other based on certain behaviours, that this points to a moral code sort of, regardless of what the behaviour is.../abe
... but moral behaviour is one SPECIFIC kind of social interaction based on the premise of Right and Wrong.
What you are describing is instinctive behavior in (social animal) finches and equating that to morality. The conclusion then is that what we call "moral behavior" is instinctive social animal behavior, behavior that benefits the group. "Good" is then behavior that benefits the social group as a whole over the individual, and "Bad" behavior then is behavior that benefits the individual at the expense of the social group or behavior that is detrimental to the social group.
But I fail to see how this has to do with the removal of faith, except that we can reach this same conclusion based on proof, logic, facts and guesses ...
{I have to recheck the source there, sorry.}
I think I know the one you mean: the study involved chimps in adjacent cages, but one had control over whether food was delivered to just themself or to both. I'm missing my link to that study too.
quote:If you expect equal pay for equal work, you're not the only species to have a sense of fair play. Blame evolution.
Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) have found that the highly social, cooperative species native to South America show a sense of fairness, the first time such behavior has been documented in a species other than humans.
Again this is explained logically by social group behavior that is beneficial to the group (if being in a group is beneficial for survival, then behavior that is beneficial to the survival of other members of the group is beneficial to individuals within the group).
quote:Scientists have begun to rethink their ideas on culture within monkey society in a large part because of the Japanese macaques. It has been observed that the macaques invent new behaviors and pass them on by immitation. In 1963 a young female named Mukubili waded into a hot spring in the Nagano Mountains to retrieve some soybeans that had been thrown in by the keepers. She liked the warmth and soon other young monkeys joined her. At first the behavior caught on only with the young macaques and their mothers. Over the years the rest of the troop took up the behavior, which now finds shelter in the 109 F (43 C) hot springs to escape the winter cold. Young monkeys have also learned how to roll snowballs, which doesn't have any survival purpose, but with which they have a lot of fun, much like human children.
Potato washing by a troop in Koshima was first started by a one and a half year old female named Imo. Researchers would put sweet potatoes along the beach to bring the monkeys out in the open. Imo found that she could get the sand off the potato better by dipping it into the river water, rather than brushing it off with her hands, like the other monkeys were doing. Her brothers and sisters imitated her first and then their mother. Over time the entire troop took to washing sand off potatoes with river water. At first they simply washed the sand off, but Imo soon found that the potatoes tasted better if seasoned with salt water from the ocean. They began to bite into the potato then dip it into the sea water to season it and bite again.
Page down to the picture of the young Macaque with the snowball if you don't want to read the whole article.
The lines between learned behavior that is transmitted ("memes") and instinctive behavior is blurred, but the result in both cases is behavior that is adapted by the social group for the benefit of the social group.
quote:When I think of morality, I am thinking specifically of things which we have made a determination of goodness upon. I am not thinking of fashions or modes, habits or acceptable slang terms. I am not thinking of ways of communication, or of what is considered polite. I am thinking about what is good.
That is a very inaccurate way to think about the concept of morality.
The Nazis had a strict moral code. They had a strong sense of right and wrong.
You and I and many other people disagree with that moral code, but it existed and was followed, nonetheless.
That is simply a fact, regardless of how you wish to too-narrowly-define the word "morality".
There are people with good morals and bad morals, the definition of "good" and "bad" changing with time and place and situation. There are also "amoral" people with no sense of right and wrong at all, either sometimes or all the time.
Morality is about how we treat each other.
quote:I can not talk about monkey morality without the value judgment of goodness to go with it.
I can, and so can scientists who study why we have a moral sense.
I think some people have caught on to the idea that morality IS about right and wrong. It does not matter what the specifics are, but it matters that we include the terms right and wrong.
Generally speaking, when we talk of morality, it is not about how we interact period, but how we interact according to a standard. As I have said, I can accept that apes and monkeys may have a standard, because they will punish or act differentially toward others who do not comply. That is something not found in the behaviour of finches.
I am still not limiting morality to the standard of behaviour amoung a culture. It is far more encompassing, with social actions only being a by-product of the person's own philosophy.
What you are describing is instinctive behavior in (social animal) finches and equating that to morality. The conclusion then is that what we call "moral behavior" is instinctive social animal behavior, behavior that benefits the group. "Good" is then behavior that benefits the social group as a whole over the individual, and "Bad" behavior then is behavior that benefits the individual at the expense of the social group or behavior that is detrimental to the social group.
It may sound odd RAZD, but I have a feeling that much of morality IS instinct that has been obscured by intelligence. I believe that because we have a high intelligence, and free will, we have challenged much of what we were 'meant' to do. We have many arguments about how humans 'ought' to behave. I find this in line with being created [sic] in the image and likeness of God. Of later being so like God that we could in turn become the CREATORS of our own ideas. The ideas that are in line with instinct are those that stay around, generally, except for that little problem that most of us instinctually seem to want to benefit ourselves rather than others. It is not a problem when you consider personal surivial or the survival of a small group or your own offspring, but it is a problem when you apply it to a large scale. Conventional morality is about large scale tolerance and respect, and seems to defy instinct.
But I fail to see how this has to do with the removal of faith, except that we can reach this same conclusion based on proof, logic, facts and guesses ...
I agreee that we are way on a tangent. It started with the repeating of the idea that we are instinctually moral because of empathy, and therefore don't need God. I did think that because of our intelligence and ability to question what we do rather than rely solely upon instinct, that a philosophy of some sort was necessary in making moral decisions, for atheists and theists alike. Because we have to reason out what is good, and because we can't rely only on instinct alone, I wanted to know what thoughts about human equality and why we should resepct that, were motivating the non-theist.
I do enjoy learning about animal behaviour, and I could talk about how trainable an animal is, and how far training can proceed within the boundaries of instinct or ability. Hm...like sheepdogs. But my thought was that benefical things like washing potatoes and tasting salt were not really moral, no more moral than using bleach or inventing the dryer. They are just interesting progressive training and signs of intelligence, without connotations of bad or good. It was not moral for Imo to teach other macaques to wash potatoes, or do you feel otherwise?
quote:I think some people have caught on to the idea that morality IS about right and wrong.
I don't think anyone here has ever said otherwise.
The points of contention have been;
1) Where this sense of right and wrong comes from (woo or a combination of social training and inborn tendencies), and
2) if there is an ultimate morality.
quote:Generally speaking, when we talk of morality, it is not about how we interact period, but how we interact according to a standard.
Right.
Societal standards combined with inborn tendencies.
quote:I am still not limiting morality to the standard of behaviour amoung a culture. It is far more encompassing, with social actions only being a by-product of the person's own philosophy.
RAZD, I am replying to you but I hope that everyone else participating will read. Your reply to the OP was very strange, you are usually very lucid, but I didn't understand a word you said or how it related to the OP at all.
All of the previous few pages of posts have been very interesting but almost none of them addressed the primary concern from the OP which is why the religious feel like their morality would be destroyed if they lost their faith.
Some of the points have been interesting and slightly related such as anastasia's comment about how "morality" for some people means turning the other cheek or, "if someone takes your coat give him also your cloak".
So yes, there is a side question that has taken over about what loosing your morality really means.
In order to get some constructive debate going, I would like to reframe the OP a little.
A person has ANY morality. Lets give it a name. A person has morality 'X' which he claims is responsible for actions 'A'. This person claims that if they loose their belief in a deity that they will abandon X and therefor willingly fail to do A because they can see no rational reason to do A.
In general it seems they think that anyone who does not believe in their diety ALREADY fails to do A or only does A for spurious reason that they feel would not be compelling to them or because we live in a soceity that has been already been shaped by X.
Anyone who has an X that depends on a god can presumably come up with some cirumstances of A where this will be readily true. Anastasia's type of example is a perfect case of this assuming that she would actually do this in reality. Most Christians I know would not volunteer their wallet and house keys over to someone who is jacking their car.
What about all of those circumstances of A that intersect with rational reasons to do A? Examples of these are something like not cheating on your spouse, charity, or volunteerism. Why the total abandoment of X if you loose your faith?
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)
... the idea that morality IS about right and wrong. It does not matter what the specifics are, but it matters that we include the terms right and wrong.
Isn't this circular definitions? Good is moral and moral is good?
As I have said, I can accept that apes and monkeys may have a standard, because they will punish or act differentially toward others who do not comply. That is something not found in the behaviour of finches.
Or we just don't observe the punishments. In either case we have instinctual behavior and learned behavior. Monkeys and chimps do have a more developed ability to learn ("monkey see monkey do" is true), and this could also make the difference. Troops that did not learn (or pass on the learning) to punish bad behavior would not have the edge on survival and reproduction that troops that did learn and pass on the knowledge would have.
Your reply to the OP was very strange, you are usually very lucid, but I didn't understand a word you said or how it related to the OP at all.
Sorry for any disruption and for not being my usual self - however ...
What I was responding to was the basic question: What happens when you remove faith from making decisions (morality is about making decisions, whether it is based on "X" or not).
RAZD writes:
When you remove arguments that are not based on proof, you are left with ones that are based on proof, logic, facts and guesses.
Arguments based on faith are actually another form of guess, but one that is accepted by the believer as true without question. As noted by Modulus this "pre-decision" is not a basis for making valid decisions:
Message 169 The same reason that you can be removed from jury service if you express that you believe the defendant did it before hearing the evidence. We don't accept faith in convicting criminals, we only accept conclusions drawn from evidence that are beyond reasonable doubt. We do this, because we have noted that it is the most reliable way of arriving at truths about the world.
I have also been toying with the concept that instinctual group behavior (with social group behavior being partly instinctual) is part of the cause of religious behavior: religions appeal to the instinctual level to form and mold group behavior under a group leader or leaders, and that externalizing this to leaders outside the normal group limits may have been crucial to early human survival. Thus the instinctual basis is the reason we have evolved religions. This should be a new thread, and I haven't really put it together yet (my energy level is low these days).
A person has ANY morality. Lets give it a name. A person has morality 'X' which he claims is responsible for actions 'A'. This person claims that if they loose their belief in a deity that they will abandon X and therefor willingly fail to do A because they can see no rational reason to do A.
What about all of those circumstances of A that intersect with rational reasons to do A? Examples of these are something like not cheating on your spouse, charity, or volunteerism. Why the total abandoment of X if you loose your faith?
I think all you need here is the testimony of the numerous people who have lost their faith and the fact that they are not jailed mass murderers. One example disproves the idea that all are "freed" to do immoral things. We also have the examples of our prison populations (to resurrect another old issue): the population proportions of atheists to christians is the same (within the margins or error in the various not exactly comparable studies) in the prisons as in the general population, and if anything show that atheists are slightly more moral than christians (slight % fewer in prison, however other factors are involved, like education).
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