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The Problem of Morals

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Do you think each human being has evolved to have different feelings?

I think feelings are very complex. there's more to feelings than evolution but evolution is a factor in its development.

Genetics, experience, culture at least all factor in to alter our emotional makeup.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Do you think different DNA dictates different feelings?

To a degree. Our DNA matches 99.9% as a result of evolutionary forces. The system of feelings is something most of us share minus genetic drift causing a few outliers. However as I said the individual development that causes us as individuals to feel what we feel is very complex. Can't be explained simply by looking at the DNA.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
I think feelings are very complex. there's more to feelings than evolution but evolution is a factor in its development.

Genetics, experience, culture at least all factor in to alter our emotional makeup.

So its not only evolution. Its a mix of a lot of things in your opinion?
 

osgart

Nothing my eye, Something for sure
Damaging to your emotional state?

Yes I would say so among other things. Also If people regard life as useless and unworthy of survival that leads to self destruction of humanity. Add love into the equation and life becomes worthy, and worthwhile. Moral principles that are accurate will preserve the person living by them, and be beneficial to others, and they'll have the opportunity to love. Love changes the logic of everything. I consider life worthwhile because of it. If I had no love then I'd be ambivalent about living and dying but I'm not. Even in the face of ceasing to exist, love is what makes life necessary and worthwhile. For me that means moral principles afford me the opportunity to love, and hopefully others will experience that for themselves in their lives. I have lost a lot of people, but I'm glad I knew them.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
To a degree. Our DNA matches 99.9% as a result of evolutionary forces. The system of feelings is something most of us share minus genetic drift causing a few outliers. However as I said the individual development that causes us as individuals to feel what we feel is very complex. Can't be explained simply by looking at the DNA.

So how do you explain each human having different "feelings"?
 

setarcos

The hopeful or the hopeless?
Science cannot tell us to make choices because science (at least in its ideal form) is descriptive, not normative.
I disagree. Arriving at a descriptive theory in science generally follows a normative formula for investigation. We cannot escape ourselves in how we apply this normative procedure nor in how we interpret its descriptive results. There is no reason that I know of which says that our scientific methods are the best methods for investigating the truths of reality. They simply seem to be the best methods with which we can apply in some meaningful -to us- way with pragmatic results.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
In my view, morality is always personal, interpersonal and situational.

I believe that I have a natural right to behave so as to ensure my well-being, the well-being of my family, and to a (slightly) lesser extent, my friends and community. However, I also believe that others have the same right. That "however," of course, may possibly lead to conflict, though hopefully such conflict can be avoided, mitigated, or kept to as little harm as possible.

I accept that "well-being" can be extended to include social well-being, so that the causing of offense can be included. Things like flatulence at the dinner table, or eating your mashed potatoes with your hands, for example.

I belief that life has value, so I can work that into how I see morality. Not just my life, but everyone's. And I think, since I believe death to be final, that life has a higher value than possessions and property, which can be replaced.

I think that not only does life have value, enjoyment of life also has value, again, both for me and for everyone.

And I think with those few precepts, I now have everything I need to make most moral decisions I'll ever be faced with.

So let's take an example: let's posit a man with a diabetic daughter, caught in downtown New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. The drug stores are closed -- the owners having the means to get out while it was possible -- but the daughter is in desperate need of insulin. What can we say about the morality of the man breaking in and getting what his daughter needs to save her life?

I contend, he's good to go. After the fact, if he can repay the druggist (not only for the insulin but also the broken window), then he ought to do so. If the situation left him destitute and unable to repay, or if he store owner doesn't make himself known, I contend that the man still acted morally.

Now, let's presume the same hurricane, and a man who wants a 58 inch flat-screen TV, who likewise breaks into a store to get it.

I'll leave others to decide whether he acted morally.
 

DNB

Christian
The question of morals is pretty complex, but I believe the biggest factor involved is feelings.
I know there are cultural factors, experiential factors, theological factors, still I think it mostly boils down to what you feel is right or wrong. These other factors contribute to what you feel is right or wrong.

Some claim morals is not something which "science" can deal with, and I generally agree.

Feelings are a feedback systems developed by humans through evolution. A system that has worked well enough to allow our survival still a very imprecise system. Fear, anger, love, lust etc... are triggered by a subconscious process, which is not a rational process. We feel what we feel but can't rationalize why we feel this way. We can consciously try to justify after the fact of experiencing what we feel.

Science would be the ideal way to make choices, However, our pesky feelings get in the way.

So, instead of increasing the likelihood of making correct choices, we rely on our feelings to make value judgements. Those values are generally not the best choices for us but the choices that will provide the desired feeling.

We humans are addicted to our feelings however, science can not not engage with the system of morals or human values since it is a mediocre system lacking any precision.

It's like telling a junkie that getting high is bad for them but the high is more important to the junkie than making the better choice.
Feelings do not define morality on any level. For, a selfish person will justify his unwillingness to assist another by claiming that he cannot neglect his own interests (family, health), or that the other person got themselves in the mess and that it won't benefit anyone by intervening. On the other hand, a less courageous person will not come to someone's aid due to fear or insecurity.. Or, a rather promsicuos person finds the idea abstinence or conservatism as absurd.

Morality means that despite our feelings, we aid our enemies. Morality means that no matter how compelled that we are to sleep with our fiancé, we refrain until marriage. Morality means that no matter how angered another person makes us, we don't escalate the situation by becoming abusive or aggressive.

Morality is the antithesis of succumbing to our feelings, it requires self-discipline, sacrifice, self-mortification and the obligation to concern ourselves with other's interests. Now, to some, this is extremely enjoyable and aligns very well with their feelings. Either way, morality stems from love: either love for our neighbour, love for equity and justice, love for decency and wholesome living, love for having a clear conscious, and for being reliable and an asset to others.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
The question of morals is pretty complex, but I believe the biggest factor involved is feelings.
I know there are cultural factors, experiential factors, theological factors, still I think it mostly boils down to what you feel is right or wrong. These other factors contribute to what you feel is right or wrong.

Some claim morals is not something which "science" can deal with, and I generally agree.

Feelings are a feedback systems developed by humans through evolution. A system that has worked well enough to allow our survival still a very imprecise system. Fear, anger, love, lust etc... are triggered by a subconscious process, which is not a rational process. We feel what we feel but can't rationalize why we feel this way. We can consciously try to justify after the fact of experiencing what we feel.

Science would be the ideal way to make choices, However, our pesky feelings get in the way.

So, instead of increasing the likelihood of making correct choices, we rely on our feelings to make value judgements. Those values are generally not the best choices for us but the choices that will provide the desired feeling.

We humans are addicted to our feelings however, science can not not engage with the system of morals or human values since it is a mediocre system lacking any precision.

It's like telling a junkie that getting high is bad for them but the high is more important to the junkie than making the better choice.

I think I agree with this but I would add more to it to flesh out the relationship between feelings, Feeling as a rational way of knowing truth and moral values. Feeling and thinking are two semi-independent rational systems of cognition. Feeling takes "valuations" and relates them together into a coherent, rational whole. Valuations are "feelings" about the importance of things and this relates directly to being able to assess whether something will help us survive and thrive or will hinder us in that area. Feeling is shared with other species but with language, humans can create complex, rational feeling constructions out of which certain moral principles have emerged as fairly self-evident and universal. Feeling, in a perceptive individual, involves understanding individual perspectives as well as universal common values and modeling that in a way that allows one to predict and understand the behavior of those that express feelings and form valuations.

Science is highly valued. Its tediousness and lack of obvious fruit toward our more immediate survival goals is offset by the fact that persistence in its practice yields great survival advantage. Written language was, perhaps, one great technological advancement in human culture which has allowed science to flourish. Science is a cultural endeavor that weds thinking (the logical organization of words and their meaning into a comprehensive and coherence whole) with repeatable experience and predictive power. We would do well to remember that because many of us have come to highly value science based on our education having shown us many examples of how science has greatly improved our lives, we go on to form a basic trust in science and do not worry about personally validating the logical consistency of scientific ideas, but trust that the process will sort things out properly in the long run. Without this strong feeling assessment of science by the majority of people, science would not be able to exist.

We would also do well to remember that while science can create weapons of mass destruction it is our feeling, our compassion, that helps us to restrain any desire to use such weapons in favor of more tedious and seemingly not quickly beneficial acts of compassion, patience and trust/relationship building. Science can hand us a reliable gun, but feeling mainly keeps us from firing it unless necessary.

Values are all about our desire to live, to thrive, to help others, to act in a way that makes you a companion to your fellow feeler rather than an overlord or a cheat. Sometimes that means waiting for those who are slow to understand to come to an understanding. Sometimes that means having to suffer with the imperfectly developed ways in which others meet their instinctual needs for the sake of helping them to learn and grow and be better for themselves and others.

Imprecision is, perhaps, a bias of the thinking type of rationality. Since that type of rationality attempts to refine the definition of words, using words to do so, it has, as it were a sense of being precise. But a well developed feeler knows precisely how someone feels and how to reach them on a deep emotional level and help them to understand things in a way that pure logical thought cannot achieve. Feeling is about recognizing the "value" of each person, their story and their way of looking at how the world impacts them. That sort of knowledge is just as vital...in fact, the ability for us to judge the vitality or importance of something is due to feeling and NOT thinking rationality.

I recommend you look at the work of Antonio Damasio to understand more about how thinking (logic) and feeling (valuation) relate to one another and are, in fact, both important and necessary for normal human cognition as we understand it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio

in the end you can't convince a person regarding a "better" choice without fundamentally appealing to their rational sense of feeling.
 
I don't either. Morals/morality is a system which lacks precession. The problem I see with utilitarianism is the promotion of happiness since it would be impossible to make a consistent evaluation of how to promote happiness. What makes us happy is likely to change over the years. Individual vs majority happiness is also very messy IMO.

Very often what promote survival is the opposite of what makes us happy. My point is that emotional states is not a reliable way to make good choices.

If morality = survival then science is not a good method for achieving it either.

Science can certainly help in some circumstances, but survival is best served by having decentralised and disconnected systems with a high degree of redundancy and variance between them.

Scientific approaches tend to promote the opposite as they are centralised (by scientific best practice), faddish (based on current trends), and optimised.

Spread of covid, responses to covid, unexpected consequences of covid (supply chain issues, etc.) all illustrate this.

Traditional societies had a far better survival chance than our modern society does (in terms of the species rather than the individual).
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
If morality = survival then science is not a good method for achieving it either.

Science can certainly help in some circumstances, but survival is best served by having decentralised and disconnected systems with a high degree of redundancy and variance between them.

Scientific approaches tend to promote the opposite as they are centralised (by scientific best practice), faddish (based on current trends), and optimised.

Spread of covid, responses to covid, unexpected consequences of covid (supply chain issues, etc.) all illustrate this.

Traditional societies had a far better survival chance than our modern society does (in terms of the species rather than the individual).

Modern society is still stuck with their emotions. Diversity was a necessity because survival was a random process in that there was no design behind it. There were many unknows and we had to hope that our emotions would drive us in the correct direction. To me, you are showing the flaws in our current system.

I'd suspect we could eliminate the need for diversity with a better system.
 
I'd suspect we could eliminate the need for diversity with a better system.

I suspect that that is pure fantasy that ignores all available evidence.

It is just a secular salvation narrative for those who find the can't deal with our fundamentally flawed and limited nature.

We are just animals after all, there is no utopia.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
I think I agree with this but I would add more to it to flesh out the relationship between feelings, Feeling as a rational way of knowing truth and moral values. Feeling and thinking are two semi-independent rational systems of cognition. Feeling takes "valuations" and relates them together into a coherent, rational whole. Valuations are "feelings" about the importance of things and this relates directly to being able to assess whether something will help us survive and thrive or will hinder us in that area. Feeling is shared with other species but with language, humans can create complex, rational feeling constructions out of which certain moral principles have emerged as fairly self-evident and universal. Feeling, in a perceptive individual, involves understanding individual perspectives as well as universal common values and modeling that in a way that allows one to predict and understand the behavior of those that express feelings and form valuations.

Science is highly valued. Its tediousness and lack of obvious fruit toward our more immediate survival goals is offset by the fact that persistence in its practice yields great survival advantage. Written language was, perhaps, one great technological advancement in human culture which has allowed science to flourish. Science is a cultural endeavor that weds thinking (the logical organization of words and their meaning into a comprehensive and coherence whole) with repeatable experience and predictive power. We would do well to remember that because many of us have come to highly value science based on our education having shown us many examples of how science has greatly improved our lives, we go on to form a basic trust in science and do not worry about personally validating the logical consistency of scientific ideas, but trust that the process will sort things out properly in the long run. Without this strong feeling assessment of science by the majority of people, science would not be able to exist.

We would also do well to remember that while science can create weapons of mass destruction it is our feeling, our compassion, that helps us to restrain any desire to use such weapons in favor of more tedious and seemingly not quickly beneficial acts of compassion, patience and trust/relationship building. Science can hand us a reliable gun, but feeling mainly keeps us from firing it unless necessary.

Values are all about our desire to live, to thrive, to help others, to act in a way that makes you a companion to your fellow feeler rather than an overlord or a cheat. Sometimes that means waiting for those who are slow to understand to come to an understanding. Sometimes that means having to suffer with the imperfectly developed ways in which others meet their instinctual needs for the sake of helping them to learn and grow and be better for themselves and others.

Imprecision is, perhaps, a bias of the thinking type of rationality. Since that type of rationality attempts to refine the definition of words, using words to do so, it has, as it were a sense of being precise. But a well developed feeler knows precisely how someone feels and how to reach them on a deep emotional level and help them to understand things in a way that pure logical thought cannot achieve. Feeling is about recognizing the "value" of each person, their story and their way of looking at how the world impacts them. That sort of knowledge is just as vital...in fact, the ability for us to judge the vitality or importance of something is due to feeling and NOT thinking rationality.

I recommend you look at the work of Antonio Damasio to understand more about how thinking (logic) and feeling (valuation) relate to one another and are, in fact, both important and necessary for normal human cognition as we understand it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio

in the end you can't convince a person regarding a "better" choice without fundamentally appealing to their rational sense of feeling.

Perfect, it seems from the WIKI page at least, supports my point.
Emotions are our biological feedback system. I agree with this. I'm just saying it is not a very good one. Emotions have their flaws.
As you stated, you cannot convince a person of a better choice because of the need to appeal to their emotions.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
I suspect that that is pure fantasy that ignores all available evidence.

It is just a secular salvation narrative for those who find the can't deal with our fundamentally flawed and limited nature.

We are just animals after all, there is no utopia.

Yes, we all like our emotions right?:)

But, that's the point. The fault is not with science. The fault is with our own flawed nature.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Feelings do not define morality on any level. For, a selfish person will justify his unwillingness to assist another by claiming that he cannot neglect his own interests (family, health), or that the other person got themselves in the mess and that it won't benefit anyone by intervening. On the other hand, a less courageous person will not come to someone's aid due to fear or insecurity.. Or, a rather promsicuos person finds the idea abstinence or conservatism as absurd.

Morality means that despite our feelings, we aid our enemies. Morality means that no matter how compelled that we are to sleep with our fiancé, we refrain until marriage. Morality means that no matter how angered another person makes us, we don't escalate the situation by becoming abusive or aggressive.

Why do you aid your enemy? Because you "feel" it is the right thing to do? Because you "feel" compassion?
Your life is a conflict of emotions which you navigate the best you can in the hopes of achieving the correct feelings.

Morality is the antithesis of succumbing to our feelings, it requires self-discipline, sacrifice, self-mortification and the obligation to concern ourselves with other's interests. Now, to some, this is extremely enjoyable and aligns very well with their feelings. Either way, morality stems from love: either love for our neighbour, love for equity and justice, love for decency and wholesome living, love for having a clear conscious, and for being reliable and an asset to others.

Morality stems from "love"? Really? Is love not also an emotion?;)
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
So how do you explain each human having different "feelings"?

Genetic drift, culture, like religious beliefs. Experience, we all have different lives which develop our brains in different ways. Our brains are very malleable throughout our lives. We may start with a common set of DNA with whatever drift might exist, but at birth our brains start to develop independent of that.
Our brain is constantly changing.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-brain-plasticity-2794886
 
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