Morality and Belief in God

[Quag]

You've misunderstood. The two criteria I've provided indicate when a conscious mind assigns moral significance to an action. We agree that the significance does not exist outside of the conscious mind-- there is nothing inherently moral about any action. But the only actions that get assigned moral significance (which, again, exists in the mind of the observer) are the ones that meet those criteria.

Those two criteria explain the conditions under which any person deems an action as having moral quality. See post #1496 for a description of where qualities such as consciousness, intention, and moral significance exist, naturalistically.

In your 2nd criteria you mentioned "according to an observer" I see no need of this nor do I see any need for them to be responsible in any way for the action
Person A can decide that the actions of person B are moral and vice versa Person A can also conclude that their own actions are moral regardless if there is an observer or not.

 

[devildavid]

You've misunderstood. The two criteria I've provided indicate when a conscious mind assigns moral significance to an action. We agree that the significance does not exist outside of the conscious mind-- there is nothing inherently moral about any action. But the only actions that get assigned moral significance (which, again, exists in the mind of the observer) are the ones that meet those criteria.

Those two criteria explain the conditions under which any person deems an action as having moral quality. See post #1496 for a description of where qualities such as consciousness, intention, and moral significance exist, naturalistically.

Moral significance is not naturalistic.

 

[devildavid]

I need glasses, I read it as 'mortality'. HAAA! You're right, carry on.....

one last comment on morality, it's something people are born with. It's either nurtured or it's lost.

Morality is an abstract concept that is learned.

 

[HumblePi]

Morality is an abstract concept that is learned.

I disagree.I believe it's something we're all born with. At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. That's all evidenced in their responses, once they’re capable of coordinated movement of course, babies will often try to soothe others who are suffering, by patting and stroking. Every normal baby has a sense of right and wrong, and some instinctual feelings triggered by kindness and cruelty. Thomas Jefferson put it this way, the moral sense is “as much a part of man as his leg or arm.”

 

[devildavid]

I disagree.I believe it's something we're all born with. At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. That's all evidenced in their responses, once they’re capable of coordinated movement of course, babies will often try to soothe others who are suffering, by patting and stroking. Every normal baby has a sense of right and wrong, and some instinctual feelings triggered by kindness and cruelty. Thomas Jefferson put it this way, the moral sense is “as much a part of man as his leg or arm.”

Morality is abstract, human behavior is not.

 

[Angel]

I think the specifics of a moral framework are learned, although I do suspect there is some innate part of human intelligence that searches for a framework of understanding that ends up being incorporated into morality, and is a direct consequence of being a self. A child's need for the world to feel 'fair' is, I think, a declaration of the early understanding of the conditions for morality I've expressed (intention, responsibility) and the impact they have on the self. Once a mind is capable of understanding how much of the origins of their own pleasure or discomfort are external, there arises a need to modify external conditions (read: other people's behavior) to maximize one's own comfort. Typically the first time a child understands and expresses upset at how another person's action has affected them, it is entirely self-focused: you took my toy, I want my toy, I am unhappy without my toy, so you are the reason I am unhappy. And boy, they have no problem letting you know.

Once empathy enters the equation, usually through being taught the importance of empathy, a child then begins to understand that when he or she takes a toy away from another child, they are eliciting the unhappiness in someone else that they themselves want to avoid. Humans have innate altruistic qualities, but I believe they have to be nurtured and directed towards empathy in order to be expressed properly. Children have to learn to have some kind of empathetic experience of another person's happiness or unhappiness. Otherwise we have purely selfish children who grow into adults that are a menace to society.

Once a child sees that there is only one toy, and it must be shared, they begins to stumble into the usefulness of morality: to maximize their shared pleasure and minimize their shared discomfort. Behold, the origins of a moral framework.

Now, the specifics of that framework-- what, precisely, is considered to be morally bad or morally good-- are learned from society, and societies do not agree on what is the most effective moral framework to maximize individual happiness and minimize individual suffering. There is a great deal of overlap, certainly (i.e. killing people is generally considered morally very bad in any society concerned with its own well-being) but there is probably just as much disagreement on the Venn Diagram of social morals as there is agreement.

Is a "framework" the same as a "sense"? Our paradigmatic observer (and actor) merely needs to be able to discern a certain kind of importance (if that's what "significance" means in our paradigm) or import (if that's what "significance" means in our paradigm); namely, the import or importance of intentional actions in the world; more precisely, what distinguishes intentional actions from all other actions, what marks out and makes intentional actions different in kind from non-intentional actions.

The introduction of an innate sense of fairness is fair enough (pun intended), but it needs to be developed a bit more because unfairness is experienced at the hands of unintentional actions as well and perhaps even earlier than the recognition of intention in others. Is being torn from the womb an intentional or unintentional action from the baby's point of view and psychological development?

Empathy and altruism are overrated shibboleths of naturalistic accounts of morality. We don't need them here. All we need, in order to ground the paradigm, is for the child in the course of his development to come to recognize intention as a distinguishing mark among actions. I think you've done that in the first paragraph.

The mention of utility is likewise unnecessary and really beside the point. Our paradigm is not a paradigm of morality, of right and wrong action, but rather of moral significance, the basis of moral judgments of right and wrong action. This aspect of the paradigm is what I found most interesting from the start.

Thus, the last bit about societal or cultural moral codes is virtually off topic.

One substantive question, however. Moral significance, on this paradigm, would adhere to the actions of lions and tigers and bears, would it not? I mean, logically would it not?
But we exclude the actions of animals (other than man) from moral significance, don't we?
How does our paradigm account for that exclusion?

I have more to say, but I'd like to get your take on the points I've raised here before going on.

 

[gfm7175]

Yeah right, all you deep-thinkers can have fun talking about the existence of God, have at it. Last time I knew, I still have the right to leave a comment. So there...

So, you are mocking people for their religion, yet you yourself practice religion (atheism)... Hmmm...

In effect, you're mocking yourself.


So maybe philosophy isn't such "mumbo jumbo" and "gobbledee gook" after all?

 

[devildavid]

So, you are mocking people for their religion, yet you yourself practice religion (atheism)... Hmmm...

In effect, you're mocking yourself.


So maybe philosophy isn't such "mumbo jumbo" and "gobbledee gook" after all?

Atheism is not a religion. It has no aspects of religion. It has no beliefs or tenets. It is the opposite side of the coin of theism, which is also not a religion. Religion is a word that was created and defined long before you were born. It has a meaning. You don't get to decide what that meaning is and apply it universally.

 

[HumblePi]

So, you are mocking people for their religion, yet you yourself practice religion (atheism)... Hmmm...

In effect, you're mocking yourself.


So maybe philosophy isn't such "mumbo jumbo" and "gobbledee gook" after all?

You don't know what you're talking about and you're only saying stuff to create a debate so you'll feel pertinent in some way.

I never said what faith I practice or even if I practice any faith at all, have I?

 

[VINLO]

Is a "framework" the same as a "sense"? Our paradigmatic observer (and actor) merely needs to be able to discern a certain kind of importance (if that's what "significance" means in our paradigm) or import (if that's what "significance" means in our paradigm); namely, the import or importance of intentional actions in the world; more precisely, what distinguishes intentional actions from all other actions, what marks out and makes intentional actions different in kind from non-intentional actions.

A moral framework is the system that informs the assignation of moral 'good' and 'bad' to every moral action. For example, according to my moral framework, a woman lovingly kissing her boyfriend is a moral good due to how I value love, expressions of love, and the positive impact it has on both of them. According to certain specific religious fundamentalist moral frameworks, this is a morally bad action, because it is sinful to engage in sexual pleasure of any kind before marriage. Both the religious fundamentalist and I agree that it is an action with moral significance, but we differ on the particulars of that significance due to our separate moral frameworks.

Obviously, modifying details (or being made aware of details) of the action can drastically alter the moral quality of the action according to a moral framework. If the woman is lovingly kissing her brother as the expression of a sexual relationship, the physical qualities of the action remain the same while the moral quality shifts from 'good' to 'very bad'.

Moral frameworks aren't typically reasoned out in great detail, they are learned as children through family and culture. They tend to only ever be questioned when some aspect of them has a negative impact on the individual (such as a gay person being told they are sinful for being gay) and sometimes not even then. Due to the sort of tacit or mysterious nature of the origins of moral frameworks, they are often perceived as an inherent sense. I do not think moral frameworks are anything like an instinct or sense, though.

The introduction of an innate sense of fairness is fair enough (pun intended), but it needs to be developed a bit more because unfairness is experienced at the hands of unintentional actions as well and perhaps even earlier than the recognition of intention in others. Is being torn from the womb an intentional or unintentional action from the baby's point of view and psychological development?

I think the womb example is a bad one, because I don't think an infant at that stage has sufficient consciousness to perceive intention or even the existence of other actors. An infant has no moral framework.
I don't know that the concept of an innate sense of a need for a moral framework (what we're calling a sense of fairness) has to be developed beyond what it is. The earliest moral framework that stems from a need for fairness is almost always an entirely selfish one: what benefits me is most important, what hurts me is most important. A child who is forced to share his toy with another child might scream "NOT FAIR!" and, in the context of their primitive moral framework, that makes total sense.

In terms of unfairness being experienced as a result of unintentional actions, I think that experience stems almost entirely from the assignation of intention to those actions. Things only seem unfair when we feel that there is an actor on the other end of that consequence. The fact that it rained the day after I washed my car didn't feel "unfair" to me because I didn't perceive a being in the clouds ruining my shiny clean car. If I believed some cosmic being had control over such things, I might experience some kind of moral outrage. In a more extreme example, like my home being annihilated in a hurricane, my sense of unfairness may be deep and profound; some part of my intelligence feels that actions so devastating must have a responsible actor at the other end in order for them to make sense.

The perception of consciousness in things that are not conscious is an artifact of our pattern-finding intelligence. We're in a drought; the rain gods must be angry. The sea is storming; the sea god must be angry. Our grain is growing twofold; the god of the harvest must be pleased with us. And so on...

(cont.)

 

[VINLO]

Empathy and altruism are overrated shibboleths of naturalistic accounts of morality. We don't need them here. All we need, in order to ground the paradigm, is for the child in the course of his development to come to recognize intention as a distinguishing mark among actions. I think you've done that in the first paragraph.

The mention of utility is likewise unnecessary and really beside the point. Our paradigm is not a paradigm of morality, of right and wrong action, but rather of moral significance, the basis of moral judgments of right and wrong action. This aspect of the paradigm is what I found most interesting from the start.

The paradigm we're building is solely for the purpose of determining when an action is perceived as moral, you are correct. I felt the need to draw a link between that paradigm and the follow up question: why do we think anything is right or wrong? I realize you didn't ask that question, but it felt so natural a transition that I wanted to explain it.

One substantive question, however. Moral significance, on this paradigm, would adhere to the actions of lions and tigers and bears, would it not? I mean, logically would it not?
But we exclude the actions of animals (other than man) from moral significance, don't we?
How does our paradigm account for that exclusion?

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This is a really excellent question, and goes to a point devildavid made earlier about actions being on a spectrum of consciousness. I think I have a way to explain how we create this distinction, but I need a bit more time to properly formulate my answer.

The short answer is going to be yes, this paradigm would also apply to animals. And I think if people are being honest with themselves, they do ascribe moral quality to animal actions. But we also make special rules around this and I have a description for how that works and fits into this paradigm.

 

[gfm7175]

Atheism is not a religion.

Yes, it is.

It has no aspects of religion.

Yes, it does.

It has no beliefs or tenets.

Yes, it does.

It is the opposite side of the coin of theism,

Correct.

which is also not a religion.

Anddddddd welcome to Paradox City, good buddy... Which one is it?
1) Theism IS a religion.
2) Theism is NOT a religion.

Any further discussion concerning theism/atheism will be irrational reasoning on your part until you clear this paradox.

Religion is a word that was created and defined long before you were born.

So?

It has a meaning.

It sure does.

You don't get to decide what that meaning is and apply it universally.

I'm not deciding what the meaning is... Philosophy does that for us.

 

[VINLO]

Moral significance is not naturalistic.

It absolutely is, just as your brain is naturalistic, and the existence of your consciousness is naturalistic. That's where morality lives.

 

[gfm7175]

...deleted 'you don't understand' mantra... deleted 'baiting' mantra...deleted 'ego boost' mantra...

I never said what faith I practice or even if I practice any faith at all, have I?

Fair enough... You tell me then...

 

[VINLO]

In your 2nd criteria you mentioned "according to an observer" I see no need of this nor do I see any need for them to be responsible in any way for the action
Person A can decide that the actions of person B are moral and vice versa Person A can also conclude that their own actions are moral regardless if there is an observer or not.

Morality doesn't exist unless there is an observer. The actor can also be the observer.

For our diagram, we made the observer a third person for the sake of clarifying where the morality actually resides, but it doesn't have to be a third person or a second person.

 

[Angel]

A moral framework is the system that informs the assignation of moral 'good' and 'bad' to every moral action. For example, according to my moral framework, a woman lovingly kissing her boyfriend is a moral good due to how I value love, expressions of love, and the positive impact it has on both of them. According to certain specific religious fundamentalist moral frameworks, this is a morally bad action, because it is sinful to engage in sexual pleasure of any kind before marriage. Both the religious fundamentalist and I agree that it is an action with moral significance, but we differ on the particulars of that significance due to our separate moral frameworks.

Obviously, modifying details (or being made aware of details) of the action can drastically alter the moral quality of the action according to a moral framework. If the woman is lovingly kissing her brother as the expression of a sexual relationship, the physical qualities of the action remain the same while the moral quality shifts from 'good' to 'very bad'.

Moral frameworks aren't typically reasoned out in great detail, they are learned as children through family and culture. They tend to only ever be questioned when some aspect of them has a negative impact on the individual (such as a gay person being told they are sinful for being gay) and sometimes not even then. Due to the sort of tacit or mysterious nature of the origins of moral frameworks, they are often perceived as an inherent sense. I do not think moral frameworks are anything like an instinct or sense, though.

Granting all of the above, it was my understanding that the paradigm we are developing is logically prior to moral frameworks. It was my understanding that our paradigm went only to the distinction between moral and amoral, and that we weren't discussing, or weren't yet discussing the distinction between moral and immoral. And that is why I called attention to the talk about "moral framework" in a reply to a question about "moral sense" broadly speaking, the sense that allows us to distinguish between intentional action and non-intentional action. Glancing over your later post, I do believe we are still on the same page as regards the paradigm. But do correct me if I'm wrong about this.

 

[VINLO]

Granting all of the above, it was my understanding that the paradigm we are developing is logically prior to moral frameworks. It was my understanding that our paradigm went only to the distinction between moral and amoral, and that we weren't discussing, or weren't yet discussing the distinction between moral and immoral. And that is why I called attention to the talk about "moral framework" in a reply to a question about "moral sense" broadly speaking, the sense that allows us to distinguish between intentional action and non-intentional action. Glancing over your later post, I do believe we are still on the same page as regards the paradigm. But do correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Yeah we're still on the same page. I digressed.

 

[Angel]

...
I think the womb example is a bad one, because I don't think an infant at that stage has sufficient consciousness to perceive intention or even the existence of other actors. An infant has no moral framework.
I don't know that the concept of an innate sense of a need for a moral framework (what we're calling a sense of fairness) has to be developed beyond what it is. The earliest moral framework that stems from a need for fairness is almost always an entirely selfish one: what benefits me is most important, what hurts me is most important. A child who is forced to share his toy with another child might scream "NOT FAIR!" and, in the context of their primitive moral framework, that makes total sense.

In terms of unfairness being experienced as a result of unintentional actions, I think that experience stems almost entirely from the assignation of intention to those actions. Things only seem unfair when we feel that there is an actor on the other end of that consequence. The fact that it rained the day after I washed my car didn't feel "unfair" to me because I didn't perceive a being in the clouds ruining my shiny clean car. If I believed some cosmic being had control over such things, I might experience some kind of moral outrage. In a more extreme example, like my home being annihilated in a hurricane, my sense of unfairness may be deep and profound; some part of my intelligence feels that actions so devastating must have a responsible actor at the other end in order for them to make sense.

The perception of consciousness in things that are not conscious is an artifact of our pattern-finding intelligence. We're in a drought; the rain gods must be angry. The sea is storming; the sea god must be angry. Our grain is growing twofold; the god of the harvest must be pleased with us. And so on...

(cont.)

I can see that an innate sense of fairness and innate selfishness contribute to the development of a child's awareness of intention as informing certain actions that affect him. If you insist on calling the differentiation of intentional and non-intentional actions as a primitive moral framework, again I'll accept your vocabulary. In this manner of speaking then, the societal and cultural moral code overlays or fits into an already developed primitive moral framework (telling between moral and amoral), resulting in what? an advanced moral framework? a fully fleshed-out moral framework?

The birth trauma may be a bad example, although there have been psychological speculations as to its primacy in the development of the human being. Nevertheless, your examples are on point. Rain that ruins a picnic is non-intentional. A rock hurled by little Johnny is intentional. And the bee sting?

 

[Angel]

...
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This is a really excellent question, and goes to a point devildavid made earlier about actions being on a spectrum of consciousness. I think I have a way to explain how we create this distinction, but I need a bit more time to properly formulate my answer.

The short answer is going to be yes, this paradigm would also apply to animals. And I think if people are being honest with themselves, they do ascribe moral quality to animal actions. But we also make special rules around this and I have a description for how that works and fits into this paradigm.

I'm excited to hear the argument for including the actions of animals under moral actions. Personally I was ready to allow that children see the actions of animals as moral, but that later societal and cultural codes overlaid on their "primitive moral framework" rule out animals as moral agents and the kids follow suit.

 

[VINLO]

I can see that an innate sense of fairness and innate selfishness contribute to the development of a child's awareness of intention as informing certain actions that affect him. If you insist on calling the differentiation of intentional and non-intentional actions as a primitive moral framework, again I'll accept your vocabulary. In this manner of speaking then, the societal and cultural moral code overlays or fits into an already developed primitive moral framework (telling between moral and amoral), resulting in what? an advanced moral framework? a fully fleshed-out moral framework?

I've muddled the water here with my digression, I apologize. Let me see if I can return some clarity.

A moral sense is our initial paradigm: the comprehension that conscious minds have intentions, and can be responsible for the execution of those intentions.
What must immediately follow after this understanding is a moral framework to permit the assignation of "good" and "bad" to those moral actions. A moral sense must come first, but a moral framework necessarily follows hot on its heels.

Does this clarify my language?

Loss of clarity here is a symptom of the fact I'm having to articulate this paradigm about morality in a way that I've never really had to explain "out loud" before, at least not in all of its constituent parts at the same time. I appreciate your calls for clarity, they are helping me crystallize this moral concept.

The birth trauma may be a bad example, although there have been psychological speculations as to its primacy in the development of the human being. Nevertheless, your examples are on point. Rain that ruins a picnic is non-intentional. A rock hurled by little Johnny is intentional. And the bee sting?

I need a little more time to get to the bee sting, bear with me.

 

[VINLO]

I'm excited to hear the argument for including the actions of animals under moral actions. Personally I was ready to allow that children see the actions of animals as moral, but that later societal and cultural codes overlaid on their "primitive moral framework" rule out animals as moral agents and the kids follow suit.

So there are two parts of this question of how my moral paradigm accommodates animal action: how humans perceive animal action, and how animals perceive action. I’m going to start with human perception of animal action because that’s the easier one to understand.

Take a lion attacking a human child. The action was the result of an intention by a conscious mind, and the child died as a direct consequence of the lion's action. Therefore, according to my paradigm, we as observers are going to label the lion's action as moral. And I think if people are being honest with themselves, they will admit this: their internal narrative is that the lion did a 'bad thing'. However, there is a modifier to this question of moral action, and that is the degree of the lion's capacity for certain intention, based on the nature of its consciousness.
A lion’s consciousness is alien to our own. When the consciousness in question is so foreign to ours, we draw different conclusions about the nature of its intention.

We do not expect the lion to be capable of the same kind of intention for killing as a human would in the same situation, and as a result the answer to the question “was the action a result of an intention by a conscious mind” the answer becomes “yeah, but kind of also not.” In this way, our perception of the animal’s intention slides more towards the realm of how we would define an accident: a consequence that did not match the intention. So the observer attaches moral significance to the action, but the weight they place on it is far, far less than if the lion were a human.

(By the way, this process works just the same for conscious minds that we perceive to be mentally handicapped in some way, or less capable of complete intention than our own, such as a very young child. We see a two year old slapping his brother as a moral action, certainly; but the degree of the perceived intention is not the same as an adult slapping another adult, even though the action is the same.)

Take a less charged situation: that same lion nuzzling its offspring. The lion’s conscious mind intended to nuzzle, and the nuzzling happened as a direct consequence of the lion’s motion, therefore it was a moral action according to a human observer. Here, human perception of animal action as moral becomes clearer: most people will look at this as a ‘good’ action. The lion is being ‘nice’, the lion is expressing love. No special conditions need to be made for the degree of intention because the concepts involved are far simpler, at least in the human observer’s mind.

Curiously, I’ve noticed we tend to explain away our assignation of moral significance to animal action by modifying the nature of that animal’s ability to have intention, but only in situations where the animal’s action upsets us. When we are viewing animal action positively, our assignation of moral quality of that action goes virtually unquestioned and unnoticed.

My dog just sat when I told her to sit. I called her a good dog, and I truly meant it. Isn’t that interesting?

 

[gfm7175]

...

My dog just sat when I told her to sit. I called her a good dog, and I truly meant it. Isn’t that interesting?

You should've changed "dog" to "cat"... You would've pulled Angel's heartstrings with that one

 

[VINLO]

You should've changed "dog" to "cat"... You would've pulled Angel's heartstrings with that one

Well cats are obviously morally bad.

 

[VINLO]

Now, as for how animals perceive action… well, we’re in far less illuminated territory when trying to answer this question, but I do believe that certain animal minds are capable of moral thought, or something like it.

The more unlike us an animal is, the less we are able to map our experience of consciousness onto theirs, and the more difficult it is to tell if they are able to perceive the answers to the two questions that govern the moral sense.

My dog seems to be able to understand the difference in action between a conscious mind and an unconscious action, at least at an incredibly rudimentary level. I gather this only based on how I observe she treats the behavior of her ball versus the behavior of her owner (me). I suppose it is possible she assigns ‘consciousness’ (whatever that means to her) to the ball, but she doesn’t interact with it the way she interacts with other dogs or with me. For all I know, only dogs are conscious to her, and to her everything that in some way resembles a dog’s behavior is a dog and is therefore conscious. Obviously I’m deep into speculation here, but for argument’s sake, let’s say that she understands at some deep basal ganglia level that I am a conscious mind.

Does my dog perceive intention? I think she might. When I stand up and grab her leash, I think she assumes I intend to walk her. That could be a purely conditioned response from all the times I pick up her leash to take her outside, and she may not even know why she is excited. The relationship between leash and walk may or may not be apparent to her, I have no idea, but she does seem to know when I’m going for her leash even before I’ve picked it up: she, at least to me, knows that I am going to grab her leash before I’ve got it in my hand. If that isn’t perception of intention, then I’m not quite sure how else to measure it in a non-human mind.

I’m quite certain she grasps the concept of responsibility, because if I grab the leash and my partner does not, she doesn’t go to my partner with her excitement; she goes to me. Both my partner and I take her for walks, sometimes together, sometimes separately. The only way she would know which of us to display her excitement to would be if she holds me responsible for the picking up of the leash.

So if she can distinguish a conscious mind (jury’s out there), and if she can perceive intention (I think she does), and if she can distinguish responsible actors (I’m certain that she does), then it would follow that she also assigns moral significance to action.

What is the quality of that moral action? I’d only be guessing. Based on her positive response, I’d guess that she sees me grabbing her leash as morally good. What is the origin and precise nature of a dog’s moral framework if it has one? that is, and may forever remain, mysterious.

 

[gfm7175]

Well cats are obviously morally bad.

:lamo

Oh no, Angel's not gonna be civil towards you anymore... jk...

But so-far you two have had a nice discussion... I've enjoyed skimming through it from the sidelines.