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theCelestrian

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1515 on: April 04, 2007, 09:31:49 PM »

Show me a human who is in a persitant vegitative state that has, and can communicate, a morality.
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dharveymi

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1516 on: April 04, 2007, 09:50:42 PM »

So an individual's morality is based on the belief that others are self-aware or conscious.  Morality has developed to aid communal living.  It has further developed as people have free time and excess resources to encompass an number of reasons to be good, it makes one feel good, it just works, etc.  Is that right?
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theCelestrian

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1517 on: April 04, 2007, 10:27:08 PM »

Quote
So an individual's morality is based on the belief that others are self-aware or conscious

No, morality is based on human beings (or other species) having a brain capable of reasoning and thus "discovering" (but it reality it's "making") morality.  No reasoning/consciousness...no morality.

But if you doubt me, try having a morality/metaphysics discussion with your favorite pet.
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dharveymi

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1518 on: April 04, 2007, 10:44:00 PM »

Don't be so defensive, I'm just trying to understand.  Morality is then based on reason.  It is therefor reasonable to be moral?  Is this what you are saying?  Reasonable beings would naturally be moral?  We are only moral to the extent that we are reasonable?  Immoral people are unreasonable?  Am I close?
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theCelestrian

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1519 on: April 04, 2007, 10:58:38 PM »

I wasn't being defense, just trying to drive the point home.

Quote
Don't be so defensive, I'm just trying to understand.  Morality is then based on reason.  It is therefor reasonable to be moral?  Is this what you are saying?  Reasonable beings would naturally be moral?  We are only moral to the extent that we are reasonable?  Immoral people are unreasonable?  Am I close?

I honestly don't know if morality is based on reason, or if it's a mix of "logical reasoning" and some level of empathy, since most Moralities do require the ability to look beyond yourself, even if it's "self-interest" that drives you.  (Example:  "I want to be free, so in order for me to be free I have to let others be free too...otherwise they might try to oppress me)

I also should caution you that "morality" is not always necessarily "good."  I could have a "fascist morality" (the strong rule the weak), and most would agree that this morality is "immoral" baed upon their own moral standpoints. So technically, this statement:

Quote
e are only moral to the extent that we are reasonable?

Is accurate, as without a brain and the ability to reason, I cannot adopt any morality,....even if that morality is an aggressive, "harmful" one to others around me.
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dharveymi

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1520 on: April 04, 2007, 11:16:47 PM »

I think pragmatism would be the most reasonable moral course, but few would say that it is a very moral system.  I really don't think empathy can lead to morality.  Empathy requires a common experience, or at least a perceived common experience.  Those with whom those experiences were not shared would be outside of such a person's moral system, leading to a very situational moral system.  I think you're on to something with the commonality thing.
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Rillion

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1521 on: April 05, 2007, 06:33:00 AM »

Plants, and Animals are amoral; They have no morality, good or bad.  Their actions are driven soley on instinct.  There are some animals that certaintly might have the conditions necessary to formulate a morality (dolphins, elephants, higher primates), but they do not have the means to communicate this morality to us if it exists.

Weeeeelll......primatology is progressing in leaps and bounds these days, so that's not necessarily an accurate statement.  There's a big debate going on about whether chimpanzees and bonobos can practice empathy, and to what extent.  Some are firmly convinced that they can and do, listing examples of them helping or punishing each other, whereas others are more skeptical.  But I think Frans de Waal has shown pretty conclusively that at least the roots  of morality can be seen in primates.  And that really shouldn't be surprising-- if morality has evolved, then it's entirely natural that we should expect to see the beginnings of it in our closest living relatives. 

Marc Hauser's recent book "Moral Minds" covers a lot of this, and it's a fun read besides....I'd recommend it.  Also Frans de Waal debates with a number of moral philosophers in the book "Primates and Philosophers" about exactly this subject.  Their main objection to him is that even if chimps and bonobos can be observed maintaining a form of morality within their group, they haven't been demonstrated to practice it in any way toward their species as a whole-- but on the other hand, that's not exactly something humans are often good at, either. 
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dharveymi

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1522 on: April 05, 2007, 06:46:39 AM »

So morality does not have a basis in reason?
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Rillion

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1523 on: April 05, 2007, 07:11:43 AM »

So morality does not have a basis in reason?

There are many different possible ways to go in answering that question.  For one thing, you could be asking about morality as it should be, or moral dispositions in reality.  The prevailing idea of moral psychologists up until recently has been that people are basically rational in their moral judgments, and that this is something we learn how to do in our childhood development.  However, the tide is turning more toward a view that morality is generally based on intuitions-- that we like to think of ourselves as scientists or judges, carefully weighing the evidence before coming to conclusions, but in actuality we are more like press secretaries or lawyers who are simply reporting or justifying decisions which have already been made without our knowing it.  For those looking at this process through an evolutionary lens, the idea is to try and find where exactly those intuitions have come from-- is there something in the environment in which we lived 100,000 years ago which might have predisposed us toward thinking about morality in a certain way? 

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt endorses what he called the Social Intuition Model (SIM) of morality, which basically says that most of our moral judgments by far are based on intuition, and that moral reasoning comes in mainly when we A) have the opportunity and the inclination to reflect privately to ourselves, or B) are in the process of trying to convince others of something we've already concluded.  He says this is the reason why people so often butt heads when they're trying to persuade someone else of a moral viewpoint-- they don't realize that their own position came from their intuitions in the first place, and so did the other person's, so trying to use arguments to change their mind isn't going to be very effective.  There's a saying that "You can't reason a person out of something they didn't reason themselves into in the first place," which is true to a great extent but obviously not completely....it is, of course, possible to argue people out of their positions sometimes, but it usually happens only over a long period of time and/or when the topic is not something to which they have great emotional ties. 

Haidt says our moral intuitions can be differentiated into five domains:
1) reciprocity and fairness
2) aversion to suffering
3) respect for hierarchy
4) ingroup vs. outgroup
5) purity and pollution

...and that if your moral concerns lie mainly in different domains than the person you're trying to argue with, then you're not going to get very far because you're simply not building on the same ground in terms of what is fundamentally important.  He describes liberals in the U.S. as being more concerned with domains 1 and 2, for example, and conservatives as caring more about 3-5.  It's not that either group are only partially moral, but rather that their concerns of how  to be moral are founded on different intuitions.  For Haidt, morality is both evolved and encultured-- we evolved to have these different domains in the first place, but our enculturation determines which ones we are more likely to emphasize.

It's humbling to think that perhaps we're not as rational as we like to think we are when it comes to moral judgments, but at the same time it might help people to communicate better if they can come to understand why arguing with others about morality can feel like bashing your head against a brick wall. 


Quote
On the July 25, 2005 episode of The Daily Show, liberal host Jon Stewart tried in vain to convince conservative U. S. Senator Rick Santorum that banning gay marriage was an injustice. Quickly realizing the futility of this effort, Stewart remarked, “It is so funny; you know what’s so interesting about this is ultimately you end up getting to this point, this crazy stopping point where literally we can’t get any further. I don’t think you’re a bad dude, I don’t think I’m a bad dude, but I literally can’t convince you.”
-- Haidt & Graham, "When Morality Opposes Justice," pg. 12


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ChristianAnarchist

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1524 on: April 05, 2007, 07:59:21 AM »

O.K. so are we now of a consensus that morality is not genetic??

theCelestrian

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1525 on: April 05, 2007, 08:08:51 AM »

Quote
O.K. so are we now of a consensus that morality is not genetic??

Maybe I'm reading all of this wrong, but it seems like the argument has been made that morality is a direct result of our biology:

  • Morality is dependent pon using your brain to either forumulate a morality, or as in the SIM model, to justify decisions one has intuitively made.
  • These behaviors are evolved as a direct result of our biology

Is this in the ballpark?
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ChristianAnarchist

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1526 on: April 05, 2007, 08:14:51 AM »

If you are saying that the genetic component is only in the forming of the brain which then "enables" us to have something called "morality", that's a bit vague, don't you think?

dharveymi

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1527 on: April 05, 2007, 08:19:17 AM »

I know I'm wading into it but, in the SIM model are 1-5 adaptive or reasonable?
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Rillion

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1528 on: April 05, 2007, 08:41:00 AM »

I know I'm wading into it but, in the SIM model are 1-5 adaptive or reasonable?

They are at least adaptive, and potentially reasonable.  As far as morality goes, reason is completely dependent on what your goals are-- that which is reasonable given one goal might be completely unreasonable given another (and here I am using "reasonable" and "rational" interchangeably).  "Adaptive" and "reasonable" are not opposed.  Luckily, research into the inherent characteristics of human nature can give us a hint about what our goals have been and possibly should be (a moral standard which seems perfect but which is in practice impossible is not very useful or effective). 

See, anthropologists used to believe that "primitive peoples" (that is, people of tribal cultures, which is the much more politically correct way to put it) were basically stupid-- even to the point of being an inferior species.  But then we began to understand (through the work of Bronislaw Malinowski and others) how their behavior was entirely rational, given their specific social context.  And these people provide some interesting clues as to how the rest of us used to be.  The worst of American gang warfare cannot approximate the amount of violence in the culture of the Yanomamo in South America (central Brazil mainly)  because the ingroup/outgroup and hierarchical dynamics are so prevalent for them. 

So civilization makes us more moral, if reciprocity and aversion to suffering are the benchmarks by which we judge such things-- the myth of the "Noble Savage" is just that.  But the motivations that we have to be moral have evolved.  We can't keep treating emotions and rationality as if they are somehow mutually exclusive.  In order to formulate a coherent plan to reach a goal, you have to have a motivation for choosing that goal in the first place.  The mouse is not going to navigate the maze to get cheese if he doesn't give a damn about having the cheese.  Evolution makes us better maze navigators, and it also makes us want to navigate in the first place.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2007, 08:44:30 AM by Rillion »
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ChristianAnarchist

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Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« Reply #1529 on: April 05, 2007, 12:03:25 PM »

I made a mistake in naming this thread.  It is accurate in that it represents what I believe but it is inaccurate in that it does not represent other alternatives that can also qualify (in my humble opinion) as "sensible" answers.  A few as previously discussed would be "Budhist Anarchy", "Jewish Anarchy", "Muslim Anarchy", and so on.  The entire point is that "anarchy" represents the form of government (or lack thereof) and "fill in the blank" represents from whence you obtain your moral ruler to guide your life.  Again, what I'm saying is that anarchy is a great way to live, but "men" need some form of direction in their lives that come from (or are believed to come from) the One who Created them...

So the title of this thread should be: "Christian Anarchy is the best sensible answer - other moral code anarchy is another sensible answer..."

A little long though...
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