Ridicule emboldens and further empowers that which you seem intent upon weakening... — creativesoul

Not always. As I alluded though, straight up ridicule isn't how I go about dissuading those who it would embolden. I will definitely reciprocate ridicule, but my main avenue will be in serious address of the ideas regardless of how cantankerous an exchange becomes. Take pro-capital punishment/anti-abortion Christians for instance. They argue on the one hand that thou shalt not kill means humans don't have the right to decide who dies and when, but when it comes to the death penalty the pro-life tenet goes flying off the gallows pole. Rather than calling them names for holding somewhat contradictory positions, I will first try and get them to recognize the contradiction.

If I really want to persuade a religious ideologue that abortion is not necessarily morally harmful in any way, mainly I will try to demonstrate that until a certain point of development a fetus cannot actually feel or perceive anything; it's not even a vegetable because its nervous system/brain doesn't even exist yet (not 'alive' in the important human sense). If they default then to the "potential life that is interrupted is the same as murder" position, then I will use that logic to again show inconsistency: If you happen upon a rape in progress, then interrupting it could potentially be interrupting potential life that would come into existence if you didn't intervene. In a way it's insulting because I'm averring that their moral reasoning would have them be bystander to a horrendous act, but it also actually follows from the potential life argument, which is what makes it a persuasive point.

If we get stuck on either of these two points things may naturally descend to ridicule, but what if they finally settle on the defense: "God says contraception is wrong"? Openly challenging their belief in and conception of god becomes my only rational angle of approach, but it is an angle so well guarded that to be successful requires a broad spectrum of emotional appeal. Ridicule is one of the only tools left with any sting once the goal posts have been relocated to the moon. It has to be done right of course. You don't simply insult someone, you demonstrate why the position they hold is ludicrous and worthy of ridicule.

Ridicule emboldens and further empowers that which you seem intent upon weakening...
— creativesoul

Not always — VagabondSpectre

Always in the relevant cases.

Always in the relevant cases. — creativesoul

That seems like a fast and loose rule. What makes you say this?

Regarding honor killings:

The examples you give are "moral decisions", but the values which support them are not widely agreed upon at all, which is what makes them easily contestable and weak.

I think morality arises somewhere in the distinction between justice and utility, where some actions we take may be viewed as being just but not serving a public sense of utility (serving the public's interest). Societies where religious and familial values are manifest in daily life view what is just differently, and not primarily based on a notion of utility.

BBC’s Asian network, 1 in 10 of the 500 young south Asians surveyed said they would condone any murder of someone who threatened their family’s honor.

Wikipedia also suggests that in some societies, very little, if any social stigma is attached to honor killings. Defense of the family honor is considered just in these societies.

I don't think it is a weak claim, even Christ brought up honor killings. It is an established tradition some societies, part of a very different belief system. So how would that conversation go...I don't think it would go well or very far. It is perhaps in a way similar to the conversation between a slave owner and an abolitionist in the 18th century.

Old traditions don't change readily or all that rationally, unless new value systems are systematically enforced. Ultimately, I think it was establishment of a multiplicity of laws which have evolved over many generations that have changed public opinion, and continue to shape our considerations

"reason" is the value; the why of the ought.

Reason has no value other than its own inherent utility, but what is moral/just is not always what is most reasonable.

I think morality arises somewhere in the distinction between justice and utility, where some actions we take may be viewed as being just but not serving a public sense of utility (serving the public's interest). Societies where religious and familial values are manifest in daily life view what is just differently, and not primarily based on a notion of utility. — Cavacava

The utility is there, it's just not our own idea of what is actually useful. Different environments and different world-views can lead to drastically different notions of what's valuable/important, and how to protect them. The practice of human sacrifice is a good example (pleasing the gods strikes again): a village might sacrifice what they know is an innocent child because they believe a good harvest depends upon it, and because the survival of everyone depends upon a good harvest, they see it as both useful and just to do so.

Wikipedia also suggests that in some societies, very little, if any social stigma is attached to honor killings. Defense of the family honor is considered just in these societies.

I don't think it is a weak claim, even Christ brought up honor killings. It is an established tradition some societies, part of a very different belief system. So how would that conversation go...I don't think it would go well or very far. It is perhaps in a way similar to the conversation between a slave owner and an abolitionist in the 18th century.

Old traditions don't change readily or all that rationally, unless new value systems are systematically enforced. Ultimately, I think it was establishment of a multiplicity of laws which have evolved over many generations that have changed public opinion, and continue to shape our considerations — Cavacava

Challenging honor for the sake of honor is difficult, and it starts with asking "why?" Why is honor so important that you're willing to kill your family (and vice versa) to keep it?

I have liked to think of Japanese honor culture as largely the result of a dangerous and feudal environment where reputation was the only available metric to judge a stranger (especially if the legends of samurai prowess are to be half-believed). Perhaps there are so many niceties/pleasantries in Japanese culture because everyone went out of their way to not cause offense (thereby not threatening reputation and honor). The oft mentioned "seppuku/harakiri " suicide of a samurai to regain honor I reckon wasn't done primarily out of irrational devotion to the samurai code, but rather because to live dishonored in a world where reputation means everything is already a grave prospect, and also because it was the only way to fix the damaged reputation of one's own family (which meant everything, including their physical safety).

If someone supports honor killing for no reason other than it's what they were told, I think I can very easily get them to question whether or not it's actually a good idea just by asking "why?". In some American jails and prisons though, where reputation can actually mean the difference between being raped and murdered or left alone, honor/reputation related violence is regrettably justifiable from the perspective of the individual (explicit honor killing perhaps not, but many other forms of violence).

The best rebuke I can presently come up with is as follows: Since we no longer live in a dangerous environment where we need to take justice into mob hands or pre-emptively kill in self-defense those with bad reputations as they approach. We are generally more free to live our own lives in peace and we're only made less free by being forced to conform to arbitrary social standards that were once a partially useful response to widespread violence, uncertainty, and oppression inflected on the masses by the warrior class. There's no earthly reason to carry on with honor killings since we can show that organized courts do a much better job of producing "justice" on a given day and in the end keep us all more free AND safe. If I can convince someone that the only good reason to retain honor is to retain freedom and security in society, but that there is now a much better way of doing so (or that honor killing no longer even works as they think it does), then won't hey submit to reason?

Reason has no value other than its own inherent utility, but what is moral/just is not always what is most reasonable. — Cavacava

What people think is moral is often quite unreasonable (see: all superstitions that have moral ramifications). Sometimes starting values are inherently unreasonable (pleasing god) and sometimes methods are unreasonable (honor killing), and sometimes both (honor killing to please god), and so I would posit that such positions, being unreasonable, are not actually moral by rational standards.

It's also noteworthy that in many senses our desire to please god in whatever arbitrary way can sometimes be build upon more basic values such as our desire to go on living and to live in excess. We sacrifice the human to please god, but we want to please god because of what we think it can do for us (heal disease, bring good harvests, prevent disaster).

What people think is moral is often quite unreasonable (see: all superstitions that have moral ramifications). Sometimes starting values are inherently unreasonable (pleasing god) and sometimes methods are unreasonable (honor killing), and sometimes both (honor killing to please god), and so I would posit that such positions, being unreasonable, are not actually moral by rational standards.

During WWII Stuart Hampshire, an English philosopher, was in France working with the French Resistance (WWII examples are the best). He was tasked by the Resistance with questioning a man about German plans but the Resistance told Hamphsire that after he spoke to the man they would kill the man regardless of what the man said or didn't say.

When Hampshire quizzed the man, the man said that he would give him information if he promised that he would be handed over to the British. Hampshire said no he could not promise that, and the man said nothing and he was latter shot.

The most reasonable course of action, the one with the most utility, in this situation would have been to lie to the man, which might have saved French lives, but Hampshire could not compromise his ow integrity (read honor) and lie to the man about such a thing. Can you question his moral position.

I think the identification reason=utility=justice, leaves out some critical moral aspects of what it is to be a moral agent.

The most reasonable course of action, the one with the most utility, in this situation would have been to lie to the man, which might have saved French lives, but Hampshire could not compromise his ow integrity (read honor) and lie to the man about such a thing. Can you question his moral position. — Cavacava

If his position is that it would me immoral to lie to the man, then yes. "What's more important Hampshire: your integrity or the lives of French children? What will their parents think of your integrity?".

I don't think it would be morally obligatory to lie to the man. In fact I would rather live in a world where we all make the moral agreement to not torture and lie to prisoners of war (in case we ever find ourselves in such a situation), but in survival situations quite a lot can be persuasively justified.

I don't support a naturalistic, causal explanation of this process.

Not sure what you mean with the last statement. I think we agree on the rest.

I mean that I don't think that evolutionary explanations, or explanations of actions which rely on the physical happenings in the brain, or its chemical composition are explanations of moral behavior. They may illuminate what is happening or even provide a basis upon which to view actions, but they do not explain why people act morally or immorally.

I think the identification reason=utility=justice, leaves out some critical moral aspects of what it is to be a moral agent. — Cavacava

It leaves out the starting values, which sometimes differ from human to human and culture to culture.

This is what I mean when I say that a moral system can only exist between agents when they have some shared values to base them on, and the more universally shared the value, the more universally persuasive the ensuing utility/reason/justice based moral arguments based upon them will be.

Sometimes two people stuck on opposing starting moral values can never reconcile their moral differences, but if they were open to scrutinizing their starting values more deeply they might actually reach common ground to start from. Values like "the right to go on living" and "freedom from oppression" are almost universally acceptable in the basic sense (they can get complicated in practice but as general goals they're broadly appealing); these are the most persuasive objectives of moral agreements between parties and they often underlie other values associated with morality like honor and honesty. Amorphous moral values like pleasing god may at times have somewhat broad appeal but have always been rife with inconsistency. Peculiar moral values like the need to self-flagellate to feel the divine is at least well defined, but it has very little broad appeal, making it weak in general (and rationally weak when empirically examined). Some starting values are better than others...

Always in the relevant cases.
— creativesoul

That seems like a fast and loose rule. What makes you say this? — VagabondSpectre

Because you supported your "not always" claim with something other than the case we were discussing.

↪creativesoul

I don't support a naturalistic, causal explanation of this process.

Not sure what you mean with the last statement. I think we agree on the rest.

I mean that I don't think that evolutionary explanations, or explanations of actions which rely on the physical happenings in the brain, or its chemical composition are explanations of moral behavior. They may illuminate what is happening or even provide a basis upon which to view actions, but they do not explain why people act morally or immorally. — Cavacava

You mean purely physicalist explanations? If so I agree. However, I also hold that thought and belief have efficacy, so I wouldn't reject causality as an element.

Because you supported your "not always" claim with something other than the case we were discussing. — creativesoul

You asserted that ridicule only ever emboldens those it is meant to disarm, and I retorted with the idea that this isn't the case. Sometimes ridicule (especially of bad ideas) is effective.

We are discussing all cases of ridicule broadly aren't we?

We were discussing divine command theory. Suicide folk in particular. Yanking someone's trousers down ought be more memorable, unless perhaps you've become desensitized...

We were discussing divine command theory. Suicide folk in particular. Yanking someone's trousers down ought be more memorable, unless perhaps you've become desensitized... — creativesoul

I cannot say ridicule would be my opening salvos when confronted with a suicide bomber with their finger on the button ("Hey man, there's no need to blow this religion thing so far out of proportion!"). But maybe if the suicide folk had been exposed to effective ridicule at some point prior to their indoctrination and radicalization, they might not have done been so effectively manipulated by it (effective ridicule isn't just insulting, it's also humorous because it points to truth).

Ridicule isn't what primarily motivates suicide bombers or anyone adhering to some sort of divine moral theory. Charlie Hebdo was identified as a target for terrorism because they engaged in ridicule, but that's not what actually motivated the terrorists. It was a political, ideological, and religious worldview combined with their own psychology, upbringing and circumstances which turned them into irredeemable murderers, and it cannot function without the notion of serving god's will (which was the context of my ridicule). If you would have me put on kid gloves because overly sensitive lunatics might snap at any moment, I simply refuse. I would rather not let terrorists win the right to be free from criticism or ridicule by means of murder and violence.

I'll yank down the intellectual trousers of anyone arrogant enough to stand before me wielding the idea that they have access to god's mind and any accompanying divine moral commandments they think apply to me. It's a stupid idea with no rational foundation and it's been muddying mankind's moral waters for millennia. When will enough be enough?

You're sorely mistaken.

Ridicule has no place being used against someone who cannot yet distinguish between their thought/belief system(worldview) and themselves. For those who would willingly die for their belief system, their entire self-worth and self-identity are wrapped up within that system...

Separating them from it requires care... genuine care. — creativesoul

I put genuine care into my ridicule: I use a scalpel rather than a rapier (as Dawkins advocates in the video); I substantiate and qualify the ridicule itself.

You say to croon them in hushed and sensitive tones, I say to shock them with vivid and stinging rebuttals. Different people can be suaded via different means; there is no right answer. In some cases, ridicule is effective, and I've seen it work in real time.

We are veering a bit off topic though, so let me try to bring it back on point: Morals derived from some kind of divine command theory are rationally unreliable because we have no rational access to any real set of divine moral commands. The real world is populated by diverse and mutually exclusive moral systems built from allegedly revealed and eternal knowledge, and most of them are want to arbitrarily mutate according to internal and external pressures. The fundamental adherence to such moral systems is hubris at best, and at worst genocidal. We should look elsewhere to found morality.

Morals derived from some kind of divine command theory are rationally unreliable because we have no rational access to any real set of divine moral commands. The real world is populated by diverse and mutually exclusive moral systems built from allegedly revealed and eternal knowledge, and most of them are want to arbitrarily mutate according to internal and external pressures. The fundamental adherence to such moral systems is hubris at best, and at worst genocidal. We should look elsewhere to found morality. — VagabondSpectre

Just to be clear, I've not promoted divine command theory.

I suggest looking to all moral systems as a means to identify and isolate the morally relevant and/or significant common denominators.

Common ground renders ridicule unnecessary and opens the door for reasonable more respectful dialogue.

I suggest looking to all moral systems as a means to identify and isolate the morally relevant and/or significant common denominators.

Common ground renders ridicule unnecessary and opens the door for reasonable more respectful dialogue. — creativesoul

You cannot reliably find common ground with a divine moral system when that system is founded on an irrational starting premise:

One religion says be pacifist, and another says spread by force. One religion says sex is bad, another religion says sex is good. Divine command theory is mutually exclusive with itself.

What does paying currency, self-mutilation, invading and conquering foreign lands, and refusing modern-medicine, have in common? These have all been paths to divine absolution which people carry out on a regular basis still to this day.

That you seek to find common dry ground with divine command theory is laughable. There is no dry land; it's just a large debris field of mostly useless old world refuse, floating on a sea of naive and emotional over-confidence.

You cannot reliably find common ground with a divine moral system when that system is founded on an irrational starting premise: — VagabondSpectre

May I suggest looking elsewhere?

Or you could continue to set out the subjective particulars. That's a good step. A winnowing out, of sorts.

double post

At conception, we are all void of any and all thought and belief...moral belief notwithstanding. Some thought and belief are extremely complex. Others are not. Calculus cannot be understood prior to understanding arithmetic. Moral belief systems cannot be understood as such by an agent until s/he has one to talk about. Thought and belief begins simply and gains in it's complexity. We all adopt our first worldview.

Agree with this so far?

Could you provide an example? — Samuel Lacrampe

Just theoretically, there might be an event where the action of fulfilling the justice is a part of the circumstances itself, and thus making one action would change what would be the just way to act in such a way that justice can never be reached.

I could be completely off the mark, but are you saying that sometimes, an action to fulfill justice could move the goal post elsewhere, effectively requiring more actions etc; like a horse attempting to reach the carrot on a stick? I am not sure if such a scenario is necessary in reality, because even if the rules of a system were set up to produce such an effect, then we could always change the rules.

Take the Prisoner's Dilemma scenario. The rules are indeed set up such that the prisoners, despite making rational decisions, can only fail. But this is not a logically necessary situation. We just need to change the rules of the game so that justice is compatible with rational behaviour.

"Where Does Morality Come From?"

The illusion of morality comes from misguided expectations that lead to suffering.

At conception, we are all void of any and all thought and belief...moral belief notwithstanding. Some thought and belief are extremely complex. Others are not. Calculus cannot be understood prior to understanding arithmetic. Moral belief systems cannot be understood as such by an agent until s/he has one to talk about. Thought and belief begins simply and gains in it's complexity. We all adopt our first worldview.

Agree with this so far? — creativesoul

Sorry for the delayed response. I wanted to take some time to thoroughly ponder this question.

On the surface you're right; before we grasp our own moral systems we're not in conscious control over their development, leaving them vulnerable to arbitrary influences. Our first consciously understood moral positions are generally given as commands when we're children (don't hit, don't lie, don't steal), but before we're given coherent and rigid moral instruction or are able to analyze our own moral systems, can we still exhibit moral behavior?

Consider the following:



Does the sharing of the nuts in the above video actually depict ethical/moral behavior?

If so, what might this indicate about early human morality?

Firstly, the nuts themselves are inherently desirable to the monkeys due to their biology (they want and enjoy the taste and satisfying feeling of eating them); nobody had to impart the idea that nuts are valuable to the monkeys. For the monkeys in this situation, access to nuts is like a starting value or goal, and it's presumably nearly universal to all monkeys who find themselves in such a situation.

The intriguing question is then "why were the nuts shared?". It just so happens that in-group food sharing is a mutually beneficial cooperative strategy, and could possibly have been selected for in the evolutionary past of monkeys and great apes, which presumably would have generated biological mechanisms to facilitate that behavior. I surmise that it is primarily an intuitive and emotional understanding which causes the monkey to share the nuts; one monkey see's the other upset and longing for some nuts, and sympathizes. It is most likely an intuitive feeling which entices the monkey to share, rather than a conscious understanding of the strategic upshot of doing so. That the monkey was able to divide the six nuts into two exactly equal shares probably has more to do with the number 6 being very easy to intuitively/visually divide than it has to do with any careful or conscious consideration on the part of the monkey

What the video does seem to demonstrate is that the intuitive "moral" decision making of monkeys can emerge naturally from biology and circumstance, without the need for formal language or reflective analysis on their part. Without knowing it, the monkey is naturally carrying out a mutually beneficial strategy of cooperation that brings about long term and mutual success in many environments (basically any tribal environment). Rational agents are able to recognize the strategic moral value behind such forms of cooperation, but evolution discovered it long before we did, and it has imbued hominids with a biological capacity to unconsciously employ cooperative (and competitive) strategies.

Just because something is an evolutionary devised strategy doesn't make it a moral strategy though, because not all strategies are cooperative or entail mutual benefit. The more a given strategy/moral arrangement necessitates an unequal or one-sided distribution of burdens and benefit, the less mutually agreeable it becomes from the perspective of the losers. We can indeed thank evolution for designing things like empathy and compassion, which emotionally and intuitively push us in the direction of cooperation where possible, but we can also blame evolution for human capacities like xenophobia and violent aggression which cause individuals and groups to exclude others from moral consideration. Specific groups and individuals can form exclusive moral clubs, but from the perspective of the morally excluded (example: the "untouchable" caste of historical India), what could rationally persuade them to buy into a moral premise that is harmful or un-beneficial to them? (note: it's fully possible to indoctrinate someone into an ideology which oppresses them, but intuitively, and by appealing to more persuasive and universal starting values (life, freedom, well-being), it's quite easy to bereave one's self, or be bereaved, of such positions). (note: it's possible to incorporate competition into a "moral" arrangement, but it will only be morally agreeable to everyone if it can be seen to benefit them (see: the economics of capitalism)).

In practice humans refer to quite a large variety of things as moral or morality. A virtue ethicist might say morality comes from virtues, a consequentialist might say morality comes from outcomes, and a theologian might say morality comes from god. All three of them might deny that we can think of Virgil the Capuchin as capable of moral behavior because he cannot understand virtue, the long term ramifications of it's actions, or god's will (traditionally we think of most animals as amoral). And yet, as if by coincidence, Virgil demonstrably engages in the exact same act that the virtue ethicist, the consequentialist, and the theologian would all argue is the right and moral course of action; understanding the what and why of Virgil's moral intuition encapsulates the origin of what our own moral systems are actually servicing (our basic human needs for survival, health, and happiness).

The kind of intuition that Virgil must have relied on to make his decision is the same kind of intuition that most humans rely on when making moral decisions of their own. The realm of conscious and higher moral thought and study contains a plethora of varying postulates and approaches that tend to frame morality as serving something greater, but inexorably they are all attempts to serve the very same set of nearly universal biological drives that spawns our moral intuition in the first place. A consequentialist appeals to the intuitive desirability of certain outcomes and possible states of affairs, while a virtue ethicist appeals to the power of certain virtues to actually bring about those intuitively desirable outcomes and states of affairs. Theology takes many and much more indirect roads, but generally the hope that an all-loving god has your back and has reserved a place for you in eternal paradise is the form of the appeal (it's not surprising how committed religious people are to their ideas given that religious ideology powerfully exploits the nearly universal human desire to go on living and to be happy; what could possibly be more valuable than eternal life with infinite happiness to boot?).

So much confusion and and contradiction tends to result when conscious moral systems are not constructed with a clear and reliable conception of what they're really trying to service. Strictly religious moral systems not only conflate and pervert our starting values with unreasonable intermediaries (example: "pleasing god is the most desirable" because god will then please us out of gratitude), they also pervert the strategic aspect of actually getting to a state of affairs which pleases god (and subsequently us). Example: "God's nature is heretosexual, therefore it is beneficial for every individual to also be heterosexual" (this particular example contains a mixed bag of irrational indirect appeals to intuition such as "god knows what's best" and "displeasing god will bring about the worst case scenario").

What actually caused me to leave religion and theism behind was a lucky ability to recognize the importance of my own emotional and intellectual well-being. As a child with no formal moral system aside from religious commandments (which are absorbed on authority), I was trapped by the painful lie that to disobey meant I would have to suffer in hell along with the rest of my somewhat non-religious immediate family. Ultimately cognitive dissonance forced me to conclude that my beliefs were not rational, but more importantly, were not healthy (hell was the most memorable of what I came to view as harmful beliefs but there were a broad collection of them that contributed to my present day state of irreligiosity).. And from what I know now, it turns out I was intuitively correct. Strict old world religious moral tenets only tend to result in successful communal living in primitive and chaotic environments rife with uncertainty and lacking science of any kind. Out of my own condition and reason I was able to come to the position that my previous religious beliefs were at the very least, not the best or most correct way of doing things; immoral.

I agree that our first worldview is more often that not thrust upon us, but our biology gives rise to a moral intuition that precedes any coherent worldview and is often the well obscured root appeal of moral systems based upon any formalized world view.

P.S: Sorry for such a lengthy response to such a simple question, I just couldn't help it (I might have made a great preacher!). Hopefully some of the ground I've covered will be relevant to where you're present point.

where does Morality come from? Did it come from religion or did it come from our evolutionary past? — Matthew Gould

Neither.

Here's a point that needs consideration.

Suppose that we have evolved to behave in a certain way.

It remains an open question as to whether we ought behave in that way.

This is Moore's open question argument, and so far as I am aware, no solution has been offered.

So basing you moral choices on what you have evolved to do, remains a moral choice.

Suppose that we have evolved to behave in a certain way.

It remains an open question as to whether we ought behave in that way.

History tells us how we have behaved for the last 5000 years, and we are still looking into it, still going to war, still making the same mistakes we have always made.

I think we know what we ought to do, we just don't do it.