This forum was closed on October 1st, 2010. However, the archives are open to the public and filled with vast amounts of good reading and information for you to enjoy. If you wish to meet some Wardrobians, please visit the Into the Wardrobe Facebook group.

Naturalism and Morality (To Natural Puppy)

Naturalism and Morality (To Natural Puppy)

Postby Kolbitar » August 25th, 2008, 9:14 am

(A conversation carried over from a blog)

Ok NaturalPuppy, here’s my response (I’ve kept my former responses and your immediate replies together, and prefaced them with two colons (::). My new responses follow without any such preface.).

::I often bring up the fact that given a naturalist view morality is something purely subjective, which means purely imaginary. Jesse********* Not a fact, Jesse, not subjective in the least, and not imaginary. Believers often, as you say, believe they are morally superior. I will attempt to disabuse you of this strange idea. Np

Please understand, I nowhere said that believers are morally superior. What I said, and continue to say, is focused on your logic, which in fact says what you do not want it to say: that nothing is REALLY right or wrong.

::Truth is the minds conformity to reality; we have truth when our concepts reflect reality. Jesse********* Unfortunately for believers, their truth is most often only backed by scripture. Truth should conform to facts. Facts are not subjective. Facts reflect reality. Facts are supported by empirical evidence, not the anecdotal evidence of scripture. Np

I’m Catholic, so I have a high regard for Scripture AND reason. Since you don’t acknowledge Scripture as any kind of authority, I will not even enter it into our discussion.

Now, you say facts are not subjective, yet you also say morality is not subjective. Morality, then, is reflected as a fact—according to you. Therefore, you can only mean to say that how man has behaved in the past, which is now fact, is his morality. However, this is not what people mean by morality, morality involves “ought”, which you say is some kind of trap -- I will address this later. Suffice it for now to point out that you’re merely calling whatever happens moral simply because it’s historical fact. Man does this, this is his morality. Clearly, then, you cannot call anything right or wrong, good or bad – those are judgments based on “oughts” and “shoulds” –, they just are. This is precisely my point: you, natural puppy, have no grounds for calling any given atrocity wrong, evil, bad. The logic of your position says, “I, NaturalPuppy, affirm that atrocity x is not really wrong, even though I feel it is.”

::If our concepts of morality, which must be anchored in an absolute "ought" -- that is, an ought that is universally binding -- do not reflect reality then morality IS purely subjective. Jesse******** Jesse, you have caught yourself in the philosophers' "is-ought" trap. An "ought" is teleologically subjective.

Ok, then what you’re saying is that you cannot say that Hitler ought not to have done what he did. Is that correct? For if you cannot speak from the position of an absolute “ought”, then, in fact, you cannot say that Hitler was really wrong. You can say, “I feel he was wrong, and that is my preference,” but you must also add, by the dictates of logic, “he was not really wrong”; for, again, to be really wrong, wrong in reality -- not purely in your feelings – your judgment has to “reflect reality.”


::Believers' "oughts" vary greatly among the thousands of different belief systems. Your "oughts" reflect only your belief. "Oughts are equated to dogma, not morality, but you are half correct about morality being purely subjective.

So saying that Hitler was really wrong, which requires me to be able to say, absolutely, he ought not to have done what he did, is equated to dogma?

::Morality is best described as behavior that conforms to ethics, the best description of which is human standards of behavior.

How can you have a standard of behavior without the implication that one “ought” to meet that standard?

::Believers' ethics, which you are equating with "oughts", are generally congruent with secular ethics up to a point, but they contain additional elements of control which vary widely among religions and belief systems. Naturalism, philosophic or methodological, has no "oughts". Naturalism subscribes to no teleology, conforming only to the ethics of reason, and rejecting the ethics of dogma. Naturalism reflects how nature "is".np

First, if you are tied to saying what’s moral is only what is, then you cannot say anything is really wrong, for that requires an “ought”. Second, naturalism does subscribe to teleology, which is implicit in the idea “the laws of nature,” as well as the ongoing reliability in the way things come to exist, continue to exist, and make way for new existences – in short, the ongoing rationality of the universe. Third, “conforming to the ethics of reason” means either whatever you do is rational, which means nothing is really wrong, or there is a standard to which we all “ought”, as in we’re all rationally bound, to conform; the former leaves you saying what you don’t want to say, the latter leaves you saying what you deny is true.

::This means that no matter how deeply or intensely someone feels something is wrong, it is not, because nothing can be, really (in truth) wrong. What gets me, np, is that people state this view as if they are the mouth piece for reality apart from the reality of their own first person point of view. Jesse ********* I know of no one who supports that view, Jesse, but I know many who purport this to be the Naturalist view. They are the same ones who purport that Naturalists lack morals. Nothing could be farther from the truth. np

It’s your logic! You admit we’re not bound to any “oughts”, a condition which is necessary to say something is really wrong, and then want to deny that your view says nothing is really wrong. Now, I have never met anyone who said or wrote that Naturalists lack morals – in general, they don’t. However, part of their worldview, part of your worldview, is the logic I’m presenting to you, which states that despite whatever morals you live by, they are nothing but a matter of preference, which is a matter of biology, which is a matter of chemistry, which is a matter of physics, which is a matter of chance; in a word, which is not a reflection of reality to which we “ought” to conform.

::So, to bring people back to the actual fact that they are indeed speaking as a person I then put all this in practical terms (and here's where people start to have fits, blaming the messenger -- me). Jesse ******** I always speak as a person. I blame you for nothing except ignorance, or gulliblity, or need, or being unable to reason, and all believers suffer from one or more of those things. Np

Well, Pope NP I :-), don’t all people suffer from one or more of these things?

::I say, for instance, that you, naturalpuppy, may feel or imagine that the holocaust was wrong (I think it safe to assume you do), but, according to you, according to the position you hold about morality, the holocaust was not really wrong. Jesse ********* Jesse, of course the holocaust was wrong. You have been indoctrinated by your apologists to hold the view that Naturalists don't exhibit morality and don't think anything can really be wrong. np

It takes no indoctrination by anything other than logic to point out that in order for you to say the holocaust was really wrong you must be able to say that those who executed it “ought” not to have done it! You’re indicting yourself, NP.

::Then I ask, to test one's intellectual honesty, something like, do you, naturalpuppy, stick by your position and affirm that the holocaust was not really wrong? Jesse ******** My position is that the holocaust was wrong. Who's intellectual honesty are you questioning? Np

Again, your position, according to logic, can only be that you feel the holocaust was wrong, but it wasn’t really wrong. You cannot discard “oughts” and implicitly keep them at the same time – that is not intellectual honesty.

::Now, some people go on, wanting to escape from their logic (and why would one want to?), by replying something along the lines you've given above, that "concepts and emotions that give rise to both good and evil are absolutely necessary for our survival and prosperity as individuals and as a species." Jesse ******** Why, indeed, Jesse. Without tempered aggression--the evolutional competition within and among species, restrained by the evolutional requirement of attachment--humans could not survive. Our brains have evolved to use both of these utilities together to gain advantage. Together, they satisfy the requirements of natural selection. We would not survive as purely aggressive beings. We could not survive as purely altruistic beings. Np
However, I am not a species, neither are you; a species is an abstraction, so there must be some link in the chain which binds individuals to an ought concerning the species -- Jesse ******** I don't understand what you mean. A species is not an abstraction. We both belong to the species homo sapiens. np

Of course a species is an abstraction, it is not a particular thing we can point to, it does not have it’s own physical existence. An abstraction may indeed be abstracted from individual particulars, but we have to be clear here, for it’s too easy to slip, as you have, into fictional attachments to abstractions. You see, we are individuals; an ought must concern us as individuals by attaching us to all other individuals in order for us to care about the abstract survival of the species.

::but you've already stated there is no such "ought". In other words, in order for you to say we ought to conform our actions to promote the survival of the species you have to provide an "ought" that, as I said before, is universally binding; ******** Jesse, there is no "ought"; there is only "is".

Then there can be no objective morality to which we are absolutely bound.

::We are the way we are because we have built in self-correcting, self-limiting mechanisms--brains that are synthesized by nature (our genetic material) and nurture (all the invoronmental influences acting on us since our conceptions).

For human beings, brains are necessary but not sufficient to account for rationality.

::Neuroscientists are now confirming what naturalists have observed. We think and act the way we do to satisfy our brains' requirements to generate chemicals that reward themselves. Both aggressive and altruistic emotions and behaviors together satisfy those requirements. Our brains don't possess free will, Jesse. They are constantly conflicted.They are compelled to do as the influences of nature and nurture dictate. Np

Ah, yes, the Big Bang made me do it! Don’t blame Hitler, he just embodied natural forces that work -- inevitably…

We’ve come to the point where Naturalism, as you ascribe to it, is a complete crock of you-know-what: epistemology. First of all, neuroscientists are not unanimous in interpreting the data they’ve observed. For example, Jeffrey M. Schwartz has written a book called The Mind And The Brain disputing your type of interpretation, and he cites others who tend his way. Secondly, you’re implicitly saying that what we know are products of the brain, that what we know are not the things themselves, which requires an immaterial transaction, but our own sensations and images. Naturalism is ultimately self-defeating, for it cuts us off, epistemologically, from the possibility of knowing that nature even exists!

::but, again, you've already denied that a prescriptive statement can be true, so apparently you're stuck with the unfortunate position that nothing -- meaning every particular thing we think evil, like murder, rape, etc.; that nothing is really wrong. Again I ask, do you affirm this, np? Does nothing within you seek an out? ******** Jesse, don't confuse naturalism with nihilism. Morality exists, but it doesn't exist as something imposed or prescribed. It exists as an essential human condition afforded our brains by the process of natural selection..There are sometimes pathologic disorders of nature or dificiencies in nurture which can contribute to behavior that doesn't conform to human standards. Behavior such as this is the result of disease or considered to be immoral.. Some is correctable. Some is not. np

All you’re saying here, to my mind, is that nothing is *really* right or wrong.


Peace,

Jesse
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

to jesse

Postby naturalpuppy » August 25th, 2008, 4:02 pm

naturalpuppy
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Aug 2008

reply to jesse

Postby naturalpuppy » August 25th, 2008, 4:10 pm

naturalpuppy
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Aug 2008

Postby naturalpuppy » August 25th, 2008, 5:10 pm

naturalpuppy
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Aug 2008

reply to jesse

Postby naturalpuppy » August 25th, 2008, 7:06 pm

naturalpuppy
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Aug 2008

Re: to jesse

Postby Kolbitar » August 26th, 2008, 1:33 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

Re: to jesse

Postby Kolbitar » August 26th, 2008, 1:40 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

Postby Kolbitar » August 26th, 2008, 1:46 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

Re: reply to jesse

Postby Kolbitar » August 27th, 2008, 10:17 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

Re: reply to jesse

Postby Kolbitar » August 27th, 2008, 10:19 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

Sober Inebriation: http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
User avatar
Kolbitar
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 667
Joined: Feb 2000
Location: Exile

Postby naturalpuppy » August 27th, 2008, 4:38 pm

naturalpuppy
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Aug 2008

Postby Jservic2 » September 23rd, 2008, 4:37 am

hmmmm
Jservic2
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 154
Joined: Jul 2006


Return to Religion, Science, and Philosophy

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered members and 9 guests

cron