Can I torture an innocent baby for fun? Why not, if it makes me feel better? Here most readers would place their morals above my personal liberties, I would hope.

But how about if I wanted to torture a terrorist to extract information in an effort to possibly save 10 innocent children’s lives? That would get trickier, wouldn’t it? Do we sacrifice the one bad life for the many?

How about if I wanted to torture the man who murdered my daughter? Why wouldn’t that be fair? How about if the man who murdered my daughter was a doctor, and my daughter was unborn? Ah! Now we are into the tall weeds.

Do governments exist to protect moralities? Why else are laws established?

Should guns be outlawed, even though our Constitution gives us the right to have them?

More people die from illegal drugs every year than from legal guns, so how would making guns illegal help stop shootings? It is already against the law to shoot someone, so if that is already illegal, then why is it also necessary to outlaw guns? Outlaws will still be outlaws, won’t they? Shouldn’t we be able to arm ourselves against those people who have questionable morals? Especially if those people reside within our government?

Alcohol also kills more people than guns do. Do we outlaw that as well? Didn’t work the first time! And cigarettes?

How about sugary drinks? They also kill more people annually than guns do (in the US). Does the govt. have an obligation to save people who are living self-destructive life styles? Particularly children? Is allowing a naive, innocent child to become obese and develop diabetes before it can make wise decisions for itself not some form of torture? Making a child suffer because it is easier to say yes than no? If so, then why are their parents not held accountable for torturing innocent babies, as I would be?

Hmmm... accountability? How is me telling you how to act moral? Or vice-versa?

Morals... sheesh! Too wishy-washy. I don’t need ’em. What say you?

Shame, guilt, embarrassment...

whispers of our individual core binary code?

We all have a ‘voice’ within, some call it a gut instinct.

Telling us what we should and should not do but what is that based on?

The truth of it is that my voice may not match your own which brings real question to the concept of objective morality for me.

Are the rules subjective or are we merely following a predetermined code. Written by the cosmos from the beginning of time?

Is morality something innate or created through environmental factors?

Nature vs nurture.

First let’s define the subject:

Objective morality is the belief in a universal morality, meaning that it isn’t up for interpretation. Some people may think of objective morality as commandments from God, while other people may think the universe has some objective rules we must follow.

When considering morals, I often wonder about the ‘bad guy’ in a scenario. Did they start out thinking, “I’m going to be the bad guy in life”? Doubtful. I believe something formed them, forged them, into a lump of clay that’s hardened just enough for their circumstance. Sure, they had to begin with the clay itself. Whatever morality they possessed upon birth as the foundation, if objective morality is to be believed then we were all born with the exact same moral code. But in their case the code is ignored, overridden by environmental factors? Maybe even biological factors? I find this improbable.

Take myself for example, one could say that having been an avid reader I developed my empathetic ability which led to a strong moral compass. Before I could even read I was fed a steady diet of “Aesop’s Fables”, my all time favorite bedtime stories. Once I learned to read on my own, I traveled through countless worlds living many lives by walking in the shoes of others. Was my base morality created through the learned skill of empathy thus allowing me to cultivate it enough to maintain it throughout life? Or was I born with this understanding and merely nurtured it through empathy?

What is my answer to the great debate, the root of the question, are we born with an understanding of morality or is it something we are taught? I believe we learn and develop our morals through personality, education, social interactions, biological factors, etc.

Based on the definition of objective morality we are to assume that the concept of morality is as concrete as the forces of gravity, what goes up must come down. Or understood with as much assurance as the laws of physics. I do not believe morality can be so cut and dry, I see it as a complex concept that requires the skill of understanding. Therefore, I cannot assume it to be universal as understanding is not innate. Understanding, the ability to empathize, is something we learn and nurture within. I’ve found that teaching a child to develop understanding comes with the same challenges as teaching basic manners.

Let’s examine the age old moral understanding of “Thou shalt not kill” and ask, does this apply in a self defense scenario? If you feel that the outcome is relative to the circumstance then are we not breaking an objective moral by allowing it? Is this truly an unwritten code that we all know from birth? In my opinion, some among us would protect themselves with zero remorse if society and religion were not waiting in the shadows to condemn them. This fact, to my way of thinking, effectively negates the concept of objective morality altogether as clearly it will have been influenced by external factors.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, objective morality or religion/societal rules set forth to govern our urges?

To believe in objective morality one would have to believe in a moral code with no color, black and white only, shades of gray would not exist. A rigid moral code to be followed per some universal programming. It is my theory that we are confusing objective morality with empathy, a learned skill.

Ultimately, for rules of society to work we have to believe that everyone has the same basic moral understanding. It gives society the right to tell those who don’t follow the ‘rules’ that they are wrong. This allows us to comfortably hold others accountable when they break the ‘code’ that we have been taught is universal.

Remember how I started this piece? Shame, guilt, embarassment...do you recall having those emotions as a small child or were you taught to have those emotions?

Perhaps the concept of morality was imagined simply to create the illusion of society...an attempt to curtail chaos.

~Orrrr maybe I just think too much ;)

Friedrich Nietzsche called them humanity’s “herd instinct.” John Stuart Mill stated that they are the proportion to which an action leads to human happiness. Socrates believed that a “moral” individual would not harm an “immoral” individual. Philosophers (and scientists) have long debated the essence of morality, and different cultures have all at various times, and even today, possess differing ideas of what is morally acceptable. But one question above all else rings clear: do morals actually exist apart from our subjective human world, in the objective realm? To be clear, morals and ethics are something urgently required by society to function properly and to ensure human happiness and trust. For truly, a world without morals would be a world of chaos and misfortune, presumably. With that established, however, do morals actually exist objectively?

Think back a few hundred thousand years: nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers wandering the fields and forests of our Earth. A group or tribe or clan that had no established moral or ethical sense would presumably contain self-serving individuals who would take what they wanted and do what they wanted to the other individuals in the group without restraint. The tribe would simply descend into chaos, and the population would be lessened, and thus, such a mindset of people would not be able to very well reproduce.

Now imagine a group containing individuals with a moral sense. These individuals would look out for each other, and care for each other, and thereby protect each other; and, as consequence, their population would grow and they would have a much better opportunity to reproduce. Thus, over the generations, the population of morally and ethically-sensible individuals would eventually severely outnumber those without a moral sense.

That is the evolutionary perspective, anyway, but to me, it makes a lot of sense. In nature, of all animals and types, there are those beings that cooperate, and even more that simply ignore each other. Other animals besides humans are social - this being for communication about food, mating, and shelter - and even those that do attack each other or cannibalize other animals of their species (such as alligators) still tend to care for their offspring.

Those with a moral sense are biologically fated to predominate in a given area (assuming that intelligence is accounted for). The stronger the moral sense, the better the members of a society protect and look out for each other, and the more the population grows. Those without morals tend to simply descend into low numbers as they fight and betray, and eventually become few or even extinct. And look now: humans - the most-moral animals - are on top.

The bottom line is this: morals are, in my opinion, certainly required for a well-reasoned, advanced, and functioning society. In fact, this sense is so deeply encoded in our genetics, that even human infants display a common tendency to favor a figure who is perceived as benevolent rather than a malevolent one. However…does the notion that morals and ethics are required for society to function properly and for human happiness mean that they objectively carry any meaning? I should think not.

As a nihilist myself, I do acknowledge that, objectively (though our human conceptions of words such as “good” and “bad” are well-reasoned, advanced, and frankly, necessary for our own survival), the notion that morals and ethics may be necessary for the survival of life does not mean that they objectively carry any value. Obviously, we need morals, and we should continue to fight for what we believe is right, but even within humanity, no single culture fights for the exact same thing, and everyone seems to assume that their perception is the right one.

This likely indicates that a true, objective moral rule does not exist. All in all, we are but a speck of dust in our tiny corner of space, and our subjective laws (arising within our tiny speck of a planet in our tiny speck of a solar system in our tiny speck of a galaxy in our tiny speck of space) may not apply to the rest of the universe that we still have yet to explore and uncover.

In the end, no matter what one does, I should argue, they are technically not bound by words such as “good” or “bad.” The universe simply does not care. However, in our advanced, modern, and well-reasoned human society, we must adhere to these principles which, as I have reasoned, appear to be within our genetic coding.

So, in a grander sense, I do not believe that morals exist in the objective realm, but I still maintain that they are what is required by society to keep it functioning. A robbery, the universe may not call a sin, but I will certainly look down upon it. A murder, the universe may not call a sin, but I dearly hope that we can all agree that no one should ever take the life of another. Morals are a creation - whether by chance or by nature - and such a wonderful, outstanding, necessary, and beautiful creation at that.

#philosophy

#opinion

#streamofthought

The Art of Moral Law

We are pieces of God. 

We make a collage of ourselves. 

We worship the unifying. 

But we cherish our dissent. 

It's our sacred right as gods. 

Morality is a dialogue, dialectical.  

It’s a fight. And battle is art.

Our Banner

Like the laws of the universe, morality is entropic. 

Oh! But It's a glorious thing to fade and fray, a banner left too long in the sun. 

May we exhaust ourselves,

May we refuse to decompose,

May we deny our bodies surrender!

There is no objective morality, which is a concept by which humans try to rationalize the world and, mainly, to find a constant rule to follow and, therefore, acquire security, happiness, all of which amount to the idea of survival.

The ethical system incorporates a sizeable amount of components, some of which vary significantly depending on the period, geographical position, age etc. and, to some extent, are comprised by the so-called common sense, which can easily be discarded often as nonsense and laziness to adapt, if one would give enough thought to it and more or less cynical concentration. Needless to say, the terms good or bad are circumstantial most of the time.

However, things, it seems, get more rigid whenever it comes to those aspects that affect life and death, and so killing is forbidden in most cases, of course with minor exceptions. This is why we nourish the illusion that there is some objectivity in the moral code because our instinct represents the root of our being, the source of our desires, the incentive that moves us relentlessly even when following the voice of rationality and pure intellect. And usually, we cannot tolerate the universe without believing in something, be it fanatic religion or an atheistic philosophy.

But it is all just a game. The crocodile is evil in the eyes of his prey, whereas he is just succumbing to his urges. That's not to say that our kind must justify the actions which contradict severely the commonly accepted boundaries of behaviour, murder being the most preeminent example, but that doesn't imply that the instrument which helps us has an existence independent from our cognition. We do our best to be alive, whereas the universe is only interested in recreating itself over and over again in different manifestations, each of which has its own, predetermined instruments to cope with the unknown.

There’s every chance that Neitzsche hated saying God was dead. Aware of the challenge to faith that came from Darwin, he probably doubted if we could maintain a moral system without using strictures from God. By the time he was writing, many other important thinkers had tried and failed to ground morality without the supernatural, and so had come to believe the only coherent moral anchor was that inside the self.

The search for moral systems starts in earnest with Enlightenment thinkers turning away from superstition, hoping instead to rationalize experience, convinced that human behavior, like the material world, would follow immutable laws, now revealed by human endeavour. Take for example Adam Smith’s law of “Supply and Demand,” an understanding considered having the force of Newton’s law of gravity despite being already contradicted, with speculators buying more of a commodity even as its price continued rising, as with frauds like the South Sea Bubble.

The same thinkers would also subscribe to “Natural Law,” with enlightened slave owners happily claiming that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” What exactly is meant for something to be self-evident?

Similarly, Leibniz and others would remain convinced “that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” It would need the ravages of the French Revolution (and the cynicism of Hume) to show no natural equilibrium guaranteeing benevolence in human society, though Rousseau’s “Noble Savage” would hang around until demolished by Goodall’s chimps. Kant, goaded by Hume, would have a last kick at the cat, and recognized, that there didn’t exist in nature and universal morality.

But if there was no natural moral system, perhaps one might be invented. With the Enlightenment played out, Modern Times begins at the Bastille and ends with the Berlin Wall. Within this time frame, there would be a concerted effort among philosophers to build mental structures immune to human frailty. Hegel, Marx, Bentham, Mill, Spenser, Bergson and others soldiered away at their various enterprises, each one doomed to failure as Neitzsche predicted.

By the twentieth century, we would have a flood of “isms” - Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, Imperialism, Social Darwinism, Classical Liberalism, Scientism, Materialism, Nationalism, even Feminism – all self-closing, self-policing mental constructs supposedly improving humanity and ushering in a utopia. Their records of course speak for themselves.

But before we dismiss them as failed, we also need to recognize each came with its own dogma, heresies, priesthood and teleology. These ideologies were secular religions, cultural or linguistic frameworks that shaped the entirety of the adherent’s life and thought. The claim that religions start all wars is only true because ideologies are also secular religions, and atheists making that claim, especially the Marxists, are also true believers.

Teleology matters since all these secular religions contain a spiritual aspect, having as their end goal some undefined “better life” achievable in this world. Most people have some sense of what is meant by Marx’s workers paradise, but for Scientism’s particular form of utopia, consider the ethos of Star Trek where everyone lives in harmony, their material needs fully met by technology. This particular zombie is anything but dead because while technology has much to offer, even if you’re well fed and comfortable, your spouse can still be fooling around, or you getting upset. A full stomach doesn’t get rid of the green eyed monster.

The lessons of history must stand and Lyotard was right to point out the bankruptcy of the great meta-narratives, and that includes the secular religions, and not just one at the expense of the other. In 1989 for example, the Berlin would makr communism as utterly wrong, but it being wrong is not proof as many assumed that capitalism is right, and so we had the financial crash of 2007. Even Nietzsche’s individual conscience didn’t help. Maybe there were some supermen, but all of us must admit to being self-serving, and some of us are sociopaths. Hitler, Stalin and even Charles Manson were each following their hearts.

But now it all wrong since every small kid in the schoolyard can tell you who’s the bully, the liar, the cheat, the tell tale or the trouble maker, and know such behave is bad. This kid is living the Ten Commandments – thou shall not murder, steal, covet or bear false witness. How come this kid will know by instinct the mind of God?

It’s no accident that all the great religions share a similar moral code. However much they might differ in how a person is saved, they all agree on what it means to try to be good. Even think what it means to use a word like good. How come we know good and bad when we meet them? How come we all call the same things good and bad? why do all these kids in the playground use the same deefinitions? There are only two possible answers. Either this knowledge is divinely inspired, or it had emerged though evolution.

The religious approach is easy to handle. Paul’s claim is we all have a natural knowledge of God. To his point, no one has yet to explain what consciousness is, whether what we have is shared with the animals, or how it even came into being. We can however say what human consciousness does. It allows us to examine our behavior, and so it gives us a conscience. Because science tends to focus on how questions to the exclusion of why questions, this gets missed in the research, but maybe being blessed with a conscience is what it means to be made in the image of God. If so then our shared morality becomes what God says in His holy books.

However, if your worldview, your personal secular religion, requires you not to believe in God then you must get to universal conscience via evolution. Perhaps that’s possible. There have been some spirited efforts, but this is not an easy intellectual problem. The starting point is always with instinct, with everything about procreation and survival. For a conscience, there must be a change in kind, with animals progressively learning to regulate their instincts as they climb the evolutionary ladder. The argument is that social animals find benefit in altruistic behavior, but the issue is evidence from the distant past. Without it, claims degenerate into post hoc arguments that by creatures working together to exploit and kill other that themselves, they exploiting and killing is bad. You can make a case for rearing young, growing cognition and language, affection in bonding and so on, but no one was there at the time so can we really be sure.

There are also the other arguments, typically Marxist or Freudian, making the claim for a priestly class intended to operationalize the needs of the elite. These priests are supposed to construct religious requirements intended to cement the existing hierarchy, and that is how these thinkers believe religions come to exist. Once there, it’s a small step to drafting the actual commandments. But here's the question. Why would people willingly follow? Is there some human need to worship? Because, without that need, religions would have no traction. Are people born with a God-shaped hole?

Alternatively, evolutionary biology may give up justifying transcendental morality, accepting that enlightened self-interest is as good as it gets. And Dostoevsky was right when he said, “Without God, everything is permissible.”

I would guess that the origin of morality is entwined with religion or faith in an omnipotent being. Those who have faith in a higher power are inclined to claim that morality is objective and I hate to discredit other's beliefs, as for some their faith is how they navigate the world, but perhaps that was the intent from the beginning.

To explain the connection I will attempt to go back to basics.

Humans discovered at an early stage that existing within a community was beneficial to each member, far more beneficial than a "lone wolf" approach. Anything from farming, to infrastructure, to technology, to language, and innovation; theyre products of our shared knowledge.

But what is to keep one individual from destroying everything that the community has built? An eye for an eye? That may only work to a certain extent before the tit for tat attitude brings an end to the social order.

Assigning a government or an authority would be the next step, to assert rules and guidelines, but how would they keep these in place?

It's unwise to rely on others to follow rules if there is no consequence (take the shopping trolly theory for instance https://www.google.com/amp/amp.hit.com.au/story/this-shopping-cart-theory-reveals-if-you-re-a-good-person-or-a-public-menace-154763) But we also cannot afford to lose members of our tribes by banishing or punishin them for wrongdoing. As there may be collective riots and protests.

From there we begin to devide society into classes in order to control the working population by limiting their education and imposing social constructs (e.g. that your station is set at birth and that is simply the way that the world works) the lower classes are less likely to question due to this lack of education.

But how do you stabilise those ideas? Well why not invent a narrative that dictates one will find eternal happiness and joy by obedience in this realm, but eternal damnation for 'sins'.

Hence morals are essentially created.

Apologies if this doesn't make sense I didn't want to miss an opportunity to join the conversation. But a migraine is preventing me from being able to collect my own thoughts very cohesively.

I also would like to say I don't mean to offend anyone by this take on religion, but personally the existence of God is more troubling to me than the lack of one would be and this is how I justify my perspective

yes! there is objective morality. some things do not require socratic dialectics to understand. every culture will tell you that killing is wrong. exceptions are always made, but they are hypocrytical ones: the vikings knew well enough that massacaring villagers along the english coast was a baddy. they did it anyway, forecfully justifying thungs for themselves, so did every killer in history.

theft is also pretty obvious. you make take from others, but then you need to make some construct to justify.

a lot of justifying was done in history, for sure.

but the very fact that you need to come up with an excuse, says you know something is wrong.

now for moral dilemmas:

1) steal a loaf of bread, cause your family is starving?

2) what do we do in cases we need to weigh the benefit of the many?

3) what if god told me to do it?

4) what if it is something a bit more gray, say stealing from a neighbor’s wife, instead of coveting her?

and so on.

again, results of these mental gymnastics may vary, by culture, conditions, the neighbor’s wife , etc.

but the very fact we struggle with it, rather than come up with a desicion immidietly, and later on feel regret for whatever we chose-all these indicate there truly is objective morality.

so the question is; how do we define what is right and wrong?

how do we deal with complex cases.

the problem is, this- any law or rule that is codified , even under the best of intentions and the purest of hearts will come smack against the hard granite that is reality. sooner or later, decisions we take and others have taken, would lead us in a certain unwanted tragectory. we can’t avoid bad choices, because they are not only dependant on us. laws and norms also fail on a more formalist level. people just can’t put in words all possible conditions and subsequant restrictions and allowances. there is much that is wrong that is not illegal, and there is much that is legal that is.

a few days ago, i was walking with my baby. and along the sidewalk we saw a dog turd that was covered by a piece of paper, rather than picked up so either the person that was doing this thought that his covering of the ‘fact’ was enough civic responsibility, or that he failed to complete the task because he was then chased by a tiger.

i’ll be frank and say, that i didn’t take this opportunity to show my girl what being an urban resident means, and did not pick the stuff up myself.

kill me, i deserve nothing less.

but here again, even in this low, pathetic moment we see that there is morality. both the soon-to-be-tiger-meal, and yours truly thought of the moral implications of inaction.

the fact that neither of us took the right step, does not deminish it being wrong.

collective, pervasive malpractice is not equal to immorality.

lets look at history again. yes, it is true that much that was murderous, vile and hateful was commited. beside gross obsenity, there are a lesser mode of crimes against easthetics (rod stewart) , disregard for the wellbeing of orhers (anyone who smokes, or plays music too loud), and the spreading of false values (oh...don’t get me started..)

these are all things that hapoened , and will regretably continue to occur.

but there is so much good that is done in this world. why aren’t we analyzing the motives of a hero, while we do so endlessly with those that we lable villans?

because one is good and one is not.

there. i just proved objective morality from a few angles.

i am still not sure what to do in this world.

but that, maybe, is the true test of morality:not finding a way, but looking for one.

Of course morals don't exist in the objective realm;

the objective realm does not exist at all.

Or if it does, it's unseeable, unknowable, indistinguishable.

There's no way for us to recognize it, so what's the use in creating this made-up distinction bewteen 'subjective' and 'objective'? No one can prove anything,

not really,

so the idea of objective reality is

useless.

If it exists, it may as well not exist.

If it doesn't exist, what's the difference?

There is none.

So of course there are no objective morals. And if there are,

we can't distinguish them from everything else anyway.

The idea of objectivity is not actionable.

All it does in the real world (experiencial, subjective)

is spawn arguments and know-it-alls.

"I know better because I'm objective."

No, you're not.

No one is.