The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => Philosophy & Science => Topic started by: The Great Scald on December 15, 2013, 10:01:20 pm
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Is there any point to morality at all? I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels like there's a dead end in materialist/determinist logic. Take the Blind Brain Theory, for example. Everyone wants to deny nihilistic understandings of reality, to some extent; it's very difficult to think like Bakker and maintain any sort of daily happiness.
The dilemma that "materialist morality" opens up is pretty obvious. Where do atheists get their morals from? Not from any external God, that's for sure. With no reference point for "right" or "wrong" outside your own self, you don't have any objective standard, you just have emotional urges that come and go. When you use Jon Haidt's five evolved foundations (harm reduction, equality, authority, loyalty and sanctity) you'll notice that they interfere with each other. Haidt's point was that morality is pre-determined and controlled by intuition. The thing is that one of these moral urges will overpower another, and create serious value conflicts. Atheists often say shit like "We don't need religion for morality, because compassion exists". That's a really limited and dumb understanding of both morality and religion, isn't it? Religion tried to stabilize moral urges, bind together people into an organized collective group by a shared belief, while also maintaining a sense of personhood.
So people follow different moral codes, depending on how their brains are hardwired. You could spend your whole life working your ass off, and feel morally righteous about it, while your boss laughs all the way to the bank. You could live your life for pleasure, getting as many highs as possible while in existence. You could devote your life to helping others, and never thinking about your own needs. You could destroy the world - and why not? You'll only exist once. From a pure materialist viewpoint, there's nothing inherently wrong with murder or child-porn or whatever. It feels like an equilibrium between "contribute to society" and "I'm going to die" is impossible to manage if you're a nihilist/materialist/determinist (which I am).
Religion, in many ways, moderated the sense of personhood with the process of survival. Notice how you see more of an "essence" in your life partner or child than you do in a random stranger on the street, who is more of a background object. You "humanize" people differently. This is essential to your survival because if reality is drained of this sentimental layer - what Bakker called "Disneyworld" - it looks like a genetic determinist hell.
Thoughts?
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I guess most atheists deal with this stuff though compartmentalization, so they can be "morally righteous" in one moment and "realistic and rational" the next. It's really a form of controlled schizophrenia. When you need to think and act clearly in the hard real world, turn on the switch of the rational compartment of your mind. When you feel sad or doubtful that you're doing the right thing, turn on the switch of the religious, moral compartment. I guess it works for most. (Or maybe it doesn't - a lot of people are morally lost, which usually just makes them cling a lot tighter to money, status and power in order to get some meaning in their empty lives.) I used to compartmentalize "hard reality" and "moral belief" all the time, but gave up on it about a year ago. It's pretty tiring to keep doing it. I don't have any sense of purpose and hope anymore.
When you strip away all religious beliefs and other pretty fictions, you end up with this: you are just a decaying bag of chemicals on a random rock circling a random dying star for no reason at all, "reason" and "purpose" are just illusions of your primate brain, and the only thing rational thing to do is to live for the sake of pleasant stimuli. (Waitasec, that's also pointless in rational terms, because pleasure is just an arbitrary product of chemical and electric impulses in your nervous system. Your desire to have sex or to eat candy is no more rational than a fear of black people or a disgust at spinach.)
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I don't have any sense of purpose and hope anymore.
Does this make you feel liberated or depressed?
When you strip away all religious beliefs and other pretty fictions, you end up with this: you are just a decaying bag of chemicals on a random rock circling a random dying star for no reason at all, "reason" and "purpose" are just illusions of your primate brain, and the only thing rational thing to do is to live for the sake of pleasant stimuli.
I would definitely choose a religion over this. Psychedelics are convincing I guess. My favorite religion so far :)
I guess i am just agnostic about everything. Makes more sense to me, since we don`t know shit anyway. I dance tango with my
confusion every day!
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Does this make you feel liberated or depressed?
Both, probably, but more depressed than liberated.
It's really a question of mental predispositions, IMO. Some people have a cheerful temperament and don't feel troubled by these nihilistic thoughts, others do.
I would definitely choose a religion over this.
That's the thing, though. I can't just choose to believe in a religion, without consciously lying to myself. I can't live a lie, even if I wanted to.
(John Calvin famously said that "you don't choose faith, but faith chooses you." I tend to agree.)
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That's the thing, though. I can't just choose to believe in a religion, without consciously lying to myself. I can't live a lie, even if I wanted to
I am totally with you on this. But what if what you are convinced of as true, also is a lie?
Do you feel like a meatball of decaying chemicals floating around on a rock? Or is that what you are convinced of at this moment in
your life? This can change, it certainly did for me. I can`t explain what happened, but it has nothing to do with religion.
We may be deceived about everything, so I stopped taking my nihilistic thoughts seriously.
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I am totally with you on this. But what if what you are convinced of as true, also is a lie?
I have no way of knowing that, but it's the closest thing to empirical scientific truth we have.
Do you feel like a meatball of decaying chemicals floating around on a rock? Or is that what you are convinced of at this moment in your life? This can change, it certainly did for me. I can`t explain what happened, but it has nothing to do with religion.
I'm not a solipsist. What I feel doesn't change the truth one bit.
We may be deceived about everything, so I stopped taking my nihilistic thoughts seriously.
Possibly. All I know is that I don't know shit.
EVER ARE MEN DECEIVED ;)
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It feels like an equilibrium between "contribute to society" and "I'm going to die" is impossible to manage if you're a nihilist/materialist/determinist (which I am).
*snip*
Thoughts?
Thought: You don't sound like a nihilist/materialist/determinist. The original post sounds more like a religious pamphlet.
It sounds like you investigated the matter on a whim, not prepared to lose (or more precisely, not prepared to lose for something), lost, then ended up at your opening post, talking about determinism like it's a path that just branches off from something else and it's dead end.
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I'm not a solipsist. What I feel doesn't change the truth one bit.
Ok, but I think that what you feel determines what you see as truth. Since we do not now what truth is, it will change, no matter how
stoic your belief in it are.
I also do not understand this need to label yourself as this or that, just because you are convinced of a theory or idea at a given moment.
Why the need to "be" a nihilist/materialist/determinist? Are they not just one of many convictions?
If we agree that most likely we are deceived, then why appear certain?
You should check out the "bakker on radio" thread. Listen to that podcast, there are some funny ideas about "the fools dilemma".
We do not now that we do not know, there are unknown unknowns hidden between the underlying unknown of the unknowable. :)
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OP, I suggest you find Jesus (alternately, find Kellhus).
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OP, I suggest you find Jesus (alternately, find Kellhus).
Lol.
I'm not a solipsist. What I feel doesn't change the truth one bit.
Ok, but I think that what you feel determines what you see as truth. Since we do not now what truth is, it will change, no matter how
stoic your belief in it are.
More importantly, I think, what you believe determines what you will do.
Is there any point to morality at all? I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels like there's a dead end in materialist/determinist logic. Take the Blind Brain Theory, for example. Everyone wants to deny nihilistic understandings of reality, to some extent; it's very difficult to think like Bakker and maintain any sort of daily happiness.
The dilemma that "materialist morality" opens up is pretty obvious. Where do atheists get their morals from? Not from any external God, that's for sure. With no reference point for "right" or "wrong" outside your own self, you don't have any objective standard, you just have emotional urges that come and go.
I guess most atheists deal with this stuff though compartmentalization, so they can be "morally righteous" in one moment and "realistic and rational" the next. It's really a form of controlled schizophrenia. When you need to think and act clearly in the hard real world, turn on the switch of the rational compartment of your mind. When you feel sad or doubtful that you're doing the right thing, turn on the switch of the religious, moral compartment.
I included the latter quote as it's likely that I may suffer so.
Roman Catholic and the mixed moral codes of children's books, science fiction, and fantasy are my formative "moral influences." My Dad's a protestant who has grown into a perpetual doubter from reading all the great religious texts. My Mom is a "put good out there" type person.
Because I've grown to question the validity of everyday human experience, I'm agnostic. Because I've grown into an agnostic (and quite possibly already been some form of sociopath ;)), I'm morally ambivalent.
But it is the examples I choose to take as human that motivate me.
I've committed "evil" in my life. In my mind, at this point, this amounts to that I've thoughtlessly affected another person's existence, which I try very hard to minimize (in some cases, this was extremely detrimental to the other persons).
If humans have lived, have been described as "good" and "evil" in both terrible extremes, and things are as irrelevant as you claim than what solid argument is there for why can't I try and be as "good" as those "evil" examples were "evil?"
And, of course, this opens the discussion to the question of what determines our moral compass... well, I doubt very much that there are many true psychopaths here (for whom watching a baby being skinned alive would elicit the same level of response as spreading butter).
I think, you'd be surprised how often our "philosophic" moral compasses align.
Hrm... maybe as a final brainstorm offering: I'm a "specieist" so while I do think that we'd survive by facilitating our existing environment, I think that humans should live, regardless.
Again, I've never been sure why these distinctions inform so much negativity. I mean, even being selfish seems best served by facilitating a cohesive social network.
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We may be deceived about everything, so I stopped taking my nihilistic thoughts seriously.
This is a great point, and I for one would do well to follow it (in addition to not giving myself so much time alone with my thoughts in the first place).
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Thanks everyone for the input in this thread, I'll think over it.
We may be deceived about everything, so I stopped taking my nihilistic thoughts seriously.
This is a great point, and I for one would do well to follow it (in addition to not giving myself so much time alone with my thoughts in the first place).
I guess that's one way to see it - just accepting that our crude human brains are so limited that we might as well be deceived about everything, and that we'll probably never answer the Big Questions of existence, so we might just as well go with the flow and stop worrying about these things.
(Bakker would probably disagree with that agnostic view - at the end of Neuropath, he basically says that agnosticism is just another comforting lie.)
As for the second part, not letting yourself be alone with your thoughts...I dunno, that never worked for me. I'm not good at ignoring or compartmentalizing, I always need to deal with my thoughts before I move on.
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(Bakker would probably disagree with that agnostic view - at the end of Neuropath, he basically says that agnosticism is just another comforting lie.)
Not sure if this was meant for me but the agnosticism was simply one part of the motivations I wanted to offer as comparison for the thread.
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The dilemma that "materialist morality" opens up is pretty obvious.
hmm? no dilemma comes to mind immediately!
Where do atheists get their morals from? Not from any external God, that's for sure. With no reference point for "right" or "wrong" outside your own self, you don't have any objective standard, you just have emotional urges that come and go.
that's a strawperson, the contention that the atheist or materialist has no reference point outside of self. my marxist position is undergirded by kantian deontology, and i see no reason why we can't assemble general duties in the absence of immaterialist speculation. if necessary, i can reduce a concept of ethical duty to published legal codes. don't get more material than that. (you may have a point against ayn rand, though--she hated marx, kant, deonotological arguments, the concept of duty, &c.)
regarding the lack of an objective standard thesis: huh? why is that necessary? who's got one? not theists, certainly! russell's got a nice refutation of the ethical argument for the existence of god: if god published a moral code, god either created the code or had it from elsewhere. if it is created by god, it is arbitrary whim and therefore not principled; if god had the code from somewhere else, why do we need god, exactly? we can develop democratically and organically whatever ethical duties we want to impose. there's no need for them to have existed on adamantium plates since the beginning of the universe.
When you use Jon Haidt's five evolved foundations (harm reduction, equality, authority, loyalty and sanctity) you'll notice that they interfere with each other. Haidt's point was that morality is pre-determined and controlled by intuition. The thing is that one of these moral urges will overpower another, and create serious value conflicts. Atheists often say shit like "We don't need religion for morality, because compassion exists". That's a really limited and dumb understanding of both morality and religion, isn't it? Religion tried to stabilize moral urges, bind together people into an organized collective group by a shared belief, while also maintaining a sense of personhood.
no need for cognitionist commentary! my impression: the entire thread assumes that a morality can and should exist. that's begging the question, yo.
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+1 for post, solo.
no need for cognitionist commentary! my impression: the entire thread assumes that a morality can and should exist. that's begging the question, yo.
I think Auriga is hoping to find either someway to better handle the cognitive dissonance that may arise in the face of the irrationality of 'morality' or a conception that is feels workable.
Auriga may be offering Haidt for a non-traditional example of a post-religious morality.
You make a solid arguments in 'laws' and for 'developing' conceptual systems of self-imposition.
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I guess that's one way to see it - just accepting that our crude human brains are so limited that we might as well be deceived about everything, and that we'll probably never answer the Big Questions of existence, so we might just as well go with the flow and stop worrying about these things.
(Bakker would probably disagree with that agnostic view - at the end of Neuropath, he basically says that agnosticism is just another comforting lie.)
I can never put away my curiosity towards these questions. My "problem" is that I can not fully commit to an idea. I can be committed
for awhile, but not for long. It is very tiring, and I have accepted long ago that I will most likely never commit fully to one idea, philosophy,ideology or whatever. Thats just how I am wired:).
Well, Bakker is also just a confused monkey like the rest of us.
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that's a strawperson, the contention that the atheist or materialist has no reference point outside of self. my marxist position is undergirded by kantian deontology, and i see no reason why we can't assemble general duties in the absence of immaterialist speculation. if necessary, i can reduce a concept of ethical duty to published legal codes. don't get more material than that. (you may have a point against ayn rand, though--she hated marx, kant, deonotological arguments, the concept of duty, &c.)
I can see how the pyramid structure of current society tends to dictate the fundimentals of any further development - we have duties to keep certain people on top of the pyramid and duty to grant them control of resources below them?
I'd kind of pay that sans a god idea, newly minted moral imperatives will hover around keeping the rich, rich. As much as the god idea caused a but load of wars, it being on the other end of an extreme spectrum, it was a leash that held the other end of the extremism from too much grip.
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I'd hoped Harris might have grand metaphysical answers but he early on notes there are "obvious" morals so I don't expect him to identify the grounding of these morals.
I think one reason Bakker is a less optimistic materialist is that he's considered the effect rewiring brains could have on morality. Even if our wiring is responsible for the generally accepted moral compass, spirituality at least grounded the "ought" in the Is-Ought problem so Good was somehow written into the universe.
Without that grounding, I'm honestly a bit wary of what the future brings. I mean this guy on Wikileaks (http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/An_insight_into_child_porn) manages to rationalize why child porn is acceptable, imagine his moral musings if he thought no one had free will in the matter.
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In the red dwarf series I thought it was BS at first that the cats left behind on the ship would evolve into humans over time. But then I realised the ship was designed for humans - so the optimal shape to form into is that of a human.
Just saying as a bit of speculative hope that maybe the optimal form for the universe is to shape into morality? Then again maybe rape is as well? Maybe the universe is conflicted?
I was both starting to feel sick reading the justifications thing and also it seemed like the same old wall of text bullshit justification method that simply hides it's shit justification by spreading it amongst thousands of words whilst using normalising words over and fucking ove ('industry'? - I'll fucking show you industry - how about normalising popping you guys into wood chippers - that'd be just as much an industry and so pretty fucking cool, eh?). Where does it get to any sort of justification? Any particular paragraph?
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I think it's what you say Callan - he smears his argument over paragraphs of smarmy calmness. It's interesting how he assures us how the "bad child pornographers" are just evil parents, while the rest of the industry is so much better.
But the conclusions at the end are probably where you'd see his final considerations about how consumption of child porn should be legalized.
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Without that grounding, I'm honestly a bit wary of what the future brings. I mean this guy on Wikileaks manages to rationalize why child porn is acceptable, imagine his moral musings if he thought no one had free will in the matter.
I am going to be a dickhead now.Without even reading about this, I jump to the conclusion that this guy needs to get his head caved in. I would happily cave it in(not really, I am kind of a pussy when it comes to fighting).
I guess it boils down to that I have a daughter, and the thought of abuse makes me boiling with rage. So I am of course biased, so maybe he has some good points.
Just saying as a bit of speculative hope that maybe the optimal form for the universe is to shape into morality? Then again maybe rape is as well? Maybe the universe is conflicted?
Yes, it would be interesting to see what shape it would take. If the universe is conflicted, rape is possibly as valuable as love, in the sense that it makes you more certain that rape is wrong when you actually know that it happens.
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This thread got me thinking "is a non-materialist morality possible?" This is something I love about the TSA--Bakker is inventing a world chock full of meaning, like Narnia but not skipping any of the hard issues. Morality in this setting seems to be arbitrary and/or simply based on power. That doesn't mean the materialist has a better answer, sure, but I really like thinking of TSA as an extended, full-detailed experiment in having all the meaning/morality you could wish for and finding out that its a raw deal.
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Well, immaterialist immortality is really just a way to ground our moral sentiments.
Which is not to flat out deny Moral Realism, as I've not read the arguments supporting such an idea, but I would give a minimum argument that the moral principles we've inherited via evolution and our social history is are more easily upheld when they're assumed to be part of the universe's structure.
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I would think more easily upheld when we have a relatively good supply of food, water, dentistry, immunisation and sanitation (and probably alot of other infrastructure I'm forgetting). I'd pay that.
Ironically when someone, when nursed amongst all that infrastructure, can't maintain behavioural norms that keep that infrastructure going* because 'it's not real' and instead do whatever the hell they want, I actually think that's a bad person.
* Caveat: Sometimes it only seems a certain norm is needed to keep the infrastructure going. So if for example someone takes their pet anaconda for a walk down the street, it breaks a norm but...upon reflection it's not breaking the infrastructure really, if at all.
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Heh, well regardless of veracity we may have to question whether disbelieving free will is a good thing:
The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating:
http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/assets/91974.pdf
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Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness:
https://users.wfu.edu/~masicaej/Baumeisteretal2009PSPB.pdf
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Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters Brain Correlates of Preconscious Motor Preparation: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/5/613.short