No Wonder So Many People are Depressed

[David]

What does morality have to do with cancer? Surely, any comprehensible definition of morality is irrelevant to the question of what is “better” in those competing scenarios. I deliberately used those examples for this reason.

Starvation is bad for a life-form in the same sense that 60-million-year-old asteroids were bad for Earth’s then-ecosystem. We use “bad” here as a stand-in for something like “not conducive to the functioning of the process in question”, of course, not as any kind of moral judgement – unless you want to talk about a morality of inanimate objects, which I’m sure you don’t.

[K]

Forget the word "morality". In this context, "Moral Law" just means "objective determination of better or worse, right or wrong". There's no reason why we need to make something "conducive to the functioning of a process in question", so if that's your definition of "better", we are free simply to act against making anything "better". The only reason we should care about anything being "better" is that "better" in this context means more than that. (The problem, of course, is that words do have different meanings in different contexts.) If you just impose the "conducive to the functioning of a process" definition, then it's fine to let the baby starve to death.

[David]

This is why precision of language is so important. You define Moral Law as any “objective determination of better or worse”, but that process is so broad that it would have to include questions about non-sentient phenomena like cancer or asteroids – which is clearly not what you intend “Moral Law” to mean here.

Why do we care about what happens to be “better” in a clinical, disinterested sense? Because of self-interest, of course. We care about what happens to us, and thus we care about the society we live in, the people whose company we value and (likely in a more abstract sense) what happens to the other people who generally comprise it. Morality is an attempt to codify those ideas, and probably serves a useful function; but I would argue that it tends to take on a life of its own, and, ultimately, distract from more urgent questions regarding cause and effect.

[K]

Well, what one includes is part of one's own beliefs about what the Moral Law is (so I cannot put that in the general definition of "Moral Law"). People don't agree on this (namely, what to include), but in arguing about it they do assume the Moral Law exists, regardless of whether this is a good or bad assumption. Environmentalists do believe, for example, that your asteroid example matters --- or at least glaciers, mountains, etc. Others will disagree.

The question is not what we care about, or why we care about it.

I think I should find and use a different term from "Moral Law", because the word "morality" is taking you down different paths.

[David]

Well, it doesn’t seem so much like a distraction (in the context of the current conversation) as the very topic of contention! What else are we talking about right now?

[K]

Well, I cannot see another term I think is clearly superior to "the Moral Law", so let's keep it then. But for you there is significant baggage (dare I say it, emotional baggage, it seems) that comes with the word "morality"; you declared some of that baggage in a previous comment.

[K]

So the central question is:

1) Is there a real, objective Moral Law? (Is there real, objective Right and Wrong?)
If yes,
2) What are the contents of the Moral Law? (What is Right and what is Wrong?)
and
3) What is the source of the Moral Law?


First, note the "if yes". Questions 2) and 3) make no sense if the answer to Question 1) is "no".
Second, a particular belief about the answer to Question 2) or 3) cannot on its own imply that the answer to Question 1) is "no".


The argument

"Is it better <yada yada>?
Is it better < different yada yada>?
...
Aren’t the answers ... wholly self-evident without the need for any other supporting edifices?"

is in fact claiming with no justification that (a subset of) the answer to Question 2) is obvious ("wholly self-evident"). In doing so, it is also assuming that the answer to Question 1) is "yes", because Question 2) is not even a well-defined question if the answer to Question 1) is "no", let alone one with a wholly self-evident answer.


TBC

[stui magpie]

There are similar morals common to almost all cultures, of which you can use the 10 commandments as an example.

Every culture I can think of has had their own definitions of right and wrong, that suited their culture. eg, killing someone within your "group" was wrong, but it was ok to kill people from other groups in battle.

Right and wrong exist, in every culture, just the details vary.

[David]

[K]

I don't think anthropological arguments are powerful enough fully to confirm or refute the Moral Law.* They might be more powerful (for the affirmative side) if the commonalities were displayed over a wider range of creatures; humans are, after all, just one species. As for differences, they don't tell us anything in support of the negative side, i.e. the non-existence of the Law; they simply demonstrate imperfect knowledge of Question 2 (if Question 2 is well defined).

David, you simply made claims about Questions 2 and 3. You don't seem to realize they don't say anything in a philosophical sense about Question 1.

The point is not that you are forced to believe in the Moral Law by some sort of proof. The point is that your expressed views are completely inconsistent with non-belief in the Moral Law. You make statements that assume its existence, instead of realizing what non-existence implies.


* I have to return to discussion of Lewis at some point. His argument quoted in part seems to mix in assumptions about psychology.

[stui magpie]

^

Have a look at primate behaviour or other mammals that live in sociable groups

[K]

Yeah, Stui, but then if we look at the whole animal world, we see it full of murder, rape, cannibalism, ... Humans of a philosophical bent then state that animals are "not Moral Agents". Well, they may state this independently of whether they see and are disturbed by animal murder, rape, cannibalism, ..., simply on the basis of their assumptions about animal intelligence and what level of intelligence is required to be a "Moral Agent". We thus have the spectacle of certain bioethicists, for example, assuming that animals "have moral worth" but "not moral agency", in which case it's claimed it's bad to do anything harmful to them but you cannot stop them from doing bad things to other creatures.*


*I was probably thinking about certain animals I hate when I wrote the above, but even monkeys, which I love, behave in startling ways if they have the chance to.

[stui magpie]

Lets stick with Mammals, and understand that "morals" evolve with a society. Judging primate behaviour by 2018 moral standards is as dumb as judging 1918 human behaviour against the same.

The point is, every group shows a sense of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. Right and wrong.

[K]

Monkeys, now and always, can behave in appalling ways. (I suppose it's possible that that is just large-scale criminality, or that they feel guilty when they behave in those appalling ways. Perhaps a look in the Fossey, Goodall, et al. literature would help.)

[stui magpie]

Appalling to us, within the rules to them.