Morality

[Aquagem]

What's wrong with complaining if it doesn't conform to our ideals just because we didn't participate? What if we participate but it still doesn't conform to our ideals?

Complaining is a form of participation. If people had griped enough before the election, it might have come out differently. It might also have come out differently if neither side in the argument had a huge megaphone to shout everybody else down. Or maybe the other side needs to get its own megaphone.

 

"That which you resist, you become."

[john_jrambo2000]

This is what I am hearing: There is no right and wrong, there is only whatever society chooses to punish. Is this a good summary?

[infamous]

What's wrong with complaining if it doesn't conform to our ideals just because we didn't participate? What if we participate but it still doesn't conform to our ideals?

Nothing wrong with complaining, athletes always complain when they loose a game. Just need to take responsibility for the lose. I think you understood my point.

[Aquagem]

This is what I am hearing: There is no right and wrong, there is only whatever society chooses to punish. Is this a good summary?

Not a good summary. Right and wrong are powerful, living presences in the minds of everyone, or virtually everyone. Right and wrong define the boundaries of culture, civilization, and acceptable behavior in every age, and probably every species, in its way. It's not that there is no right or wrong, but that right or wrong, like every other aspect of culture and life, EVOLVE, i.e., are not fixed. Some things change quickly, some slowly, but all things in the Sublunar sphere do CHANGE.

[infamous]

Not a good summary. Right and wrong are powerful, living presences in the minds of everyone, or virtually everyone. Right and wrong define the boundaries of culture, civilization, and acceptable behavior in every age, and probably every species, in its way. It's not that there is no right or wrong, but that right or wrong, like every other aspect of culture and life, EVOLVE, i.e., are not fixed. Some things change quickly, some slowly, but all things in the Sublunar sphere do CHANGE.

Absolutely; The more things change, the more they remain the same.

[infamous]

Aquagem; you the man!

[john_jrambo2000]

Evolution is a biological process! What about history? Does history change? Does what happened in 1984 change? Does the process of fusion change? What about the speed of light? Will it be different ten thousand years from now? There's lots of things that never change! Will 2+2 not equal four at some future time?

[Aquagem]

Evolution is a biological process! What about history? Does history change? Does what happened in 1984 change? Does the process of fusion change? What about the speed of light? Will it be different ten thousand years from now? There's lots of things that never change! Will 2+2 not equal four at some future time?

Let's try that a little differently. Are things the same as they were in 1984? (Aside from several species extinctions, a record rate of habitat destruction, a rapid acceleration of warming trends and consequent species migrations, etc., etc... ) No, they're not. Against a background of what appear to be constant processes, operating on the same old electrons and protons that have been around for quite a long time, we are, as always, swimming in a stream of change, chaotic, unpredictable, open-ended, free -- a flood tide of diversity propagating through a dynamic system of energy and matter.

 

There is no inherent conflict between the ideas of constancy and change. The persistence of a proton may be billions of earth years, but that same proton can be a member of unnumbered different, unique, never-to-be-repeated events (or species, or galaxies...). The recombination of been-here-a-long-time evolves into an endless pageant of the never-was-before.

• At some levels, orders of magnitude, interstellar spaces, etc., change appears to be very slow. Our galaxy revolves in about 200 million years.
  
• At others, say, the center of Sun, change (acted out against a background of constant processes) is at a fever pitch. At a scale of nanometers and duration of pico-seconds, e=mc^2 acts out its hydrogen->helium+energy disco dance.
  
• Somewhere in between these extremes, say, in the bioshpere of Earth, things change pretty fast, and also pretty slow. The seasons churn one year toward the next as the sun oscillates north to south to north to the rhythm of an almost-perfect sinusoid.
  

Caught in the "zone of middle dimensions", on Earth, life perks along, trying hard to maintain itself between the harsh limits of too much and too little, working to maintain its dynamic equilibrium of energy and material flows against the intractable forces of entropy that eventually pull all organic life back into the soil. BY ITS NATURE, nothing about life, except that initial drive to stay alive, is constant. Genetically, we change slowly. Culturally, we change much faster. Morally, well, that's anybody's guess. But CHANGE, not constancy is the primary distinguishing characteristic of life, and all related to life.

 

Only the imaginative power of an open-ended brain evolved to live in such a place could have invented the IDEA that anything could be changeless. And it has taken centuries, millennia, to expand our minds behind that cage and into the further reaches of the universe in which we live, and move, and have our being.

[infamous]

Evolution is a biological process! What about history? Does history change? Does what happened in 1984 change? Does the process of fusion change? What about the speed of light? Will it be different ten thousand years from now? There's lots of things that never change! Will 2+2 not equal four at some future time?

Evidently you have never heard of John S. Mill. One the greatest minds to grace humanities doorstep. This is his quote, if my memory serves me correctly. I think you missed the point, no disrespect intended however, we all miss the boat on ocassion.

[lindagarrette]

This could lead to a discussion about time perception. Do things change "over time" while time flows along or is time static and events occur in sequence to give us a perception of passing time? Obfiously events are predicated on other events but what does time have to do with anything?

[infamous]

This could lead to a discussion about time perception. Do things change "over time" while time flows along or is time static and events occur in sequence to give us a perception of passing time? Obfiously events are predicated on other events but what does time have to do with anything?

There are several theories poping up out there in scientific circles that it may even be possible that things like the gravitational constant, the Hubble constant, and possibly even the speed of light may change with time. Ofcourse this change would be so slight that we may never detect it. Then again maybe we will, nobody knows what the absolute facts are yet.

[sanctus]

And there is as well a theory that makes a model of a seguence of static universes.

[sanctus]

Aquagem.

 

Why was john-jrambo's resume not good?

I mean society defines what is morally acceptable and what not, therefore when the society evolves the moral evolves as well and what was good may become bad and what is good may become bad 2000km further.

 

 

EDIT: Sorry I note now that I said something very similar to you.

[sanctus]

Infamous.

You asked somewhere about 20 posts back if I would define killing as morally good or bad and on what basis. I answer you generalizing to how and on which basis one could answer.

 

There used to be an interesting philosophy at the end of the 19th century: philosophers argued that it was good for mankind to have every now and then a little "blood-bath" (don't know if you say this in english I mean a war) to clean humanity. The morality this philosophers had permitted them to to see killing as good thing.

And what about killing for self-defense (not like theUS pretend to do, but actually someone is about to stab you with a knife and you throw him in a last effort over a bridge), you can very well argue that there killing was a morally good thing.

 

And just to support my claim that morality is defined by the society you are in: take the nazi-germany and take germany, the society changed, as well as what used to be morally good!

[Aquagem]

Aquagem. Why was john-jrambo's resume not good?

 

I'm really glad you asked, because I think it touches on one of the most important issues of our day, especially in science and education. I hope I can do this justice.

 

The situation of Western Civilization (is that a modest enough start?):

 

· Traditional view (Christianity or Islam – Pick your poison): Absolute morality. One right way. Continuous with the universe. Moral law = God's law. Everybody does things differently, but there is only ONE RIGHT WAY. We have the RIGHT WAY, and therefore, everybody else is automatically WRONG. Heaven or Hell. You’re with me or you’re against me. No compromise. Convert or die. Religion in a nutshell. (Writ large across the dusty plains of Iraq and undermining freedom in the US.)

 

· Postmodern view: Fundamentally relative morality. No single right way. Purely human culture. Arbitrary social whim. No worldview better than any other. All equal, subject to bias (cultural, gender-based, age-related, etc., but dependent on cultural and all worthy of equal respect). Right and wrong a matter of leaning; no absolutes, no responsibility. THIS is the view Mr. Rambo presented in his post, asking if it summarized my position on morality. It doesn't. This isn't the picture I was presenting, and I don't agree with it.

 

These are the two games in Morality Town, and I think they are both wrong. Mr. Rambo, as I interpret it, is a member of the traditional school of morality, and I think his summary post was asking whether, if the absolute morality model is wrong, the postmodern view ("It's all what society wants it to be.") is the real state of morality.

 

No, sez I. It is a false duality to assume that morality has to be the exclusive product of one – total control by an outside entity – or the other – no control except the whim of human fashion. My response was, “Not a good summary”, followed by my introduction of a third model of morality, one based on evolution, bolstered by our new and much expanded view of biology (including new findings of neuroscience), and one that is fundamentally different from the other two. Here are a couple of salient extracts from what I said originally, many posts before the response to Mr. Rambo.

 

Originally Posted by pgrmdave

 

What is the purpose for morality?

 

 

(From my post #38): This is one of the long-standing arguments of religions against evolution. Morality can't have any source but something outside ourselves, can it? ...

 

From an evolutionary standpoint, though, morality is as important a survival strategy as any other artifact of biological or cultural evolution. In the competition for resources, which are always limited, always necessary, and always require the expenditure of energy and time to acquire, a culture (primate, ungulate, canine...) can conserve a great deal of energy through cooperation, the suppression of aggression, and sharing. We have significant brain tissue for functioning in a social manner (facial expressions, outward signs like blood flow to the head when we're embarrassed, erectile tissue here and there, and so on).

 

The point of this is that, while there are many conventions of morality that are under social control, at the core of morality is a set of constants that have evolved with us, and we with them, that trace to our inherent survival initiatives. If we are to continue to survive, we can't change them, any more than we can stop wanting to stay alive. Morality, in this view, is biologically based, is alive, and evolves. The absolute view dates from a time when we also thought the stars were fixed in the sky and the world was a few hundreds of miles in extent.

 

The biological view is far removed from absolutes, and also far removed from the whims of fashion implied by the second view presented above. And looking at morality from a biological and evolutionary perspective is important, both from the standpoint of science and also of countering the claim by creationists and other religious literalists that if you accept evolution, you undercut the basis of morality. That's nonsense. We have just been slow to realize it, and, now that we do, I think we need to open a new thread in our civilized discourse to begin to develop this new understanding to the betterment of all.

 

 

This is REALLY ROUGH. Unfortunately, the world of work gets in the way of the more interesting aspects of life, and this topic needs some finesse. I'll try to get back to it soon.

One more thought -- our moral predilections are MEMES, persistent thought forms that are passed from generation to generation through symbols and form the substrate of culture. Also called ENGRAMS, they guide behavior as 'extragenetic information', and mutate, are selected for, and evolve along with us. This is where neuroscience comes in and makes the whole picture really interesting.

[infamous]

Are you sure that you havent got the ratio's back to front? Im pretty sure (or rather im under the impression), that it's agreed that there is less murder per individual 'these days' than there was in eg. tribal/hunter gatherer times. The reason i say this is that the 'noble savage' idea is regarded as a myth im sure. There never was a noble savage, it was just savage.

Quite right geko; My terminology is misleading, what I'm pointing out is that the ability for one human being to eliminate others of his kind has increased with the passage of time. No longer is it hand to hand warfair, one on one combat, it's possible for one person to be responsible for the death of thousands. Remember 9/11, and I think the trend is here to stay for the forseeable future.

[pgrmdave]

I believe, although I don't have sources, that the trend is toward fewer conflicts, but with each conflict having greater loss of life.