Posted on 01/17/2014 6:50:09 AM PST by Heartlander
1. If morality is subjective (by individual or group), as atheists/materialists claim, then what any individual/group ought to do is necessarily relative to that individual/group purpose. IOW, if my purpose is to make a frozen margarita, I ought put ice in the blender. If my purpose is to make fresh peanut butter, I ought not put ice in the blender. The ought-ness of any task can only be discerned by mapping it to the purpose for which the act is committed. Under moral subjectivism, acts in themselves are just brute facts with no objective moral value; they must be mapped to the subjective purpose to determine subjective moral value (oughtness).
2. The question “Is it moral to gratuitously torture children?” implies that whomever does such an act finds it personally gratifying in some way, and we are asking a third party if the act is moral or immoral. The only possible, logically consistent answer a subjective moralist (atheist/materialist) can give is that yes, it is moral, because the moral challenge is tautologically valid in the subjective morality model. If my purpose is to gratify myself, and torturing children gratifies me, there is a 1 to 1 mapping of act to purpose- I ought do so. It is moral by definition for anyone who is gratified by the act to do so for their own gratification.
3. If the moral subjectivist says that the act is immoral “to them”, they are committing a logical error. The acts of others can only be morally evaluated according to that particular person’s subjective purpose, not according to the subjective purposes of anyone else. That is the nature of subjective commodities and relationships. Whether or not it is something a third party “ought” do for their purposes is entirely irrelevant and is treating the third party’s purposes as if they are objectively valid and binding evaluations on the acts of others.
4. Would an atheist/materialist intervene if someone else was gratuitously torturing children? If they had the power to snap their fingers and eliminate this kind of activity from the world, would they do so? I suspect the answer to both would be: yes. Note how self-described moral subjectivists would treat their own personal preferences as if they were objectively valid and binding on others.
5. Only a sociopath can truly act as if morality is subjective. “Moral subjectivism” is a intellectual smokescreen. It is a self-deception or an oughtright lie. Its proponents cannot even act or respond to questions as if moral subjectivism is true. They betray themselves as closet moral objectivists in denial, hiding from the implications of a morality they must live and act as if objective.
Ultimate goal? Standard? Value? Rational being? Rational ethics? Reason?
The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will…. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.
Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
- Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.
1) No gods worth having exist.
2) No life after death exists.
3) No ultimate foundation for ethics exists.
4) No ultimate meaning in life exists.
5) Human free will is nonexistent.
- William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)
Consider this, to remove any ‘creator’ from our very existence including the beginning of our universe is to remove any ‘thought or intelligence’ from the equation. By definition, you are ultimately left with an existence from stupidity.
Basically, “materialism” is the idea that there are no such thing as ideas
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Philosophical materialism suggests no such thing. It is an absurd position you have staked out with that statement.
The philosophical materialist would state that an idea is a mental process and mental processes physically exist in the brain.
You may disagree vehemently with the position, but it makes no sense to completely misstate the position they do take.
Materialism assumes that reality is defined by the empirical, yet there is no basis in logic or reason for such an assumption.
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And the philosophical materialist - if honest - would agree with you. Their response would be very predictable. “I have no evidence of anything but the physical world”, and you - if honest - would have to agree. That you have faith in the existence of another realm of existence is not evidence of its existence.
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More precisely, the philosophical materialist would not admit to the concept of a purpose. A purpose is most definitely not a process, but everything is process to the materialist. They may say the illusion of a purpose is a process, but in order to say that they must use language that assumes the existence of purpose, because the use of language is not just random sounds, but rather sounds specifically ordered to convey an idea such that the purpose in one mind is copied to another mind. Each time the materialist communicates an idea, he betrays his own ideals.
We have been fighting this point since Democritus and Leucippus, yet they are still arguing it today, and the materialists of today are still no closer to explaining purpose.
David Hume tried, but came up with “You can’t get an ought from an is.” ... and he is right. An ought, meaning a purpose, has to be a self-evident concept or nothing else happens.
Materialists like Hawking and Dawkins have been trying to jam through the equivalence of purpose with a thought process, but they get no traction because it violates the everyday experience of nearly everyone with the ability of abstract thought.
Something has to give here. If "life" is the goal of morality then it is not moral to help those with inferior genes. Moreover if morality is a byproduct of evolution, then it is also in error to not favor peoples who are similar to you genetically over those who are different than you genetically in many cases (not all--it could make genetic sense in some cases if the need to broaden your gene pool is greater than the pressures of competition for territory and resources).
Even Charles Darwin opined that taking care of weak individuals and invalids etc was moral--right after he pointed it out it was obviously contrary the good of our gene pool to do so. Seems this serves as a concrete counter-example to your premise unless Mr Darwin was quite mistaken.
Sorry, if materialism is correct, then modern concepts of ethics are obviously in error, and if you think it through no ethical statement would be either valid or not valid in the sense of the western notions we have of ethics and Natural Law that even our materialists seem to embrace in practice. Rather all ethical judgements would be echoes of the advantage of those having them and would be nor more valid than any other phenomena would be. You might as well decide if what a computer did was "ethical" when it followed a program. Or if a chair is "ethical" for just being about obeying the laws of physics.
No, I would not have to agree. I believe human experience shows that universal concepts such as logic, beauty, values, moral laws, etc. have just as much evidence for their independant objective existance and are just a "real" as gravity or any other aspect of the material word. Faith is not blind faith or a leap of faith - it is based on objective evidence.
You have changed the definition of the word objective to suit your needs. Of the senses and subject to verification is entirely absent from your construction.
No I have not. The existance of universal moral laws and values which have existed in every culture known to man is objective non emperical evidence of their existance. Logic is not empirical and cannont be discerned by the senses but exists indepedant of perception. Both are objective non empirical realilties. Both remain true whether you believe in them or not.
Each time the materialist communicates an idea, he betrays his own ideals.
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That is a significant misread of philosophical materialism. Nothing in the materialist bag of tricks suggests that communication of ideas is antimaterialist.
No I have not.
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I’m sorry, but you have.
You cannot presume, as you have, that those universal moral laws are transcendant, and not the result of trial and error in groups of humans living together.
Likewise, logic. The notion that A=A is an empirical observation that has been made into a ‘law’.
And before y’all join together to kick my a$$, I was philosophy major in college, having graduated 30 some years ago. I am not a strict materialist by any stretch, but folks do themselves no favors by being simply misinformed.
Agreed, math (or logic) isn’t something we imagine or make for ourselves, it’s something we discover. It points to a realm of objective reality beyond ours. Even if Pythagoras never lived the theorem, just differently named, eventually would have been revealed and still would be an objective truth.
I most certainly can as these laws are universal and you can't provide a shred of evidence that they are "the result of trial and error", Many are counter-productive to survival and counter intuitive. I'm not even sure what "trial and error " means in this context of a demonstrably innate, universal phenomenon veiwed across widely separated groups in time and space that have had no interaction among each other.
Also please show me how you touch, taste, see, smell or hear A=A or A does not equal not-A. Please measure it it for me. I'm not sure what your being a philosophy major 30 years ago has to do with it - Alan Plantinga, chair of Philosophy at Notre Dame and one of the most, if not THE most, repsected American philosophers today agrees with my side of this argument. That doesn't in itself make it right but it certinly counter-balances your 30 year old major.
Alan = Alvin (typo)
Can I ask what the specific laws that make up universal morality including those which are counter-intuitive or counter-productive?
Funny thing about those who study and discuss philosophy, for anyone arguing abc, we can find another arguing xyz, in total contradiction to abc.
It doesn't surprise at all that someone like Alan Plantinga, apparently known for his Christian apologetics would take the position you state that he has taken (I confess to having never read any of his books).
And in response to this statement of yours: I most certainly can as these laws are universal and you can't provide a shred of evidence that they are "the result of trial and error"
I can only say, turn that statement around and see if it does not equally apply to your statement about moral laws being transcendant. Where's your proof?
Are you an atheist / materialist? - or just looking for logical fallacies…
Are you an atheist / materialist? - or just looking for logical fallacies…
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I’m agnostic. Of the type that says “I don’t know”, not the type that says “it cannot be known”.
I don’t agree with the statement that in a world where there are no transcendant values, there is nothing wrong with gratuitously torturing children.
Accepting that it’s OK to gratuitously torturing children would completely shatter any social strucure in place, and early man figured out that the protections a social structure provides is more than enough incentive to curb those behaviors which destroy social structures. Thereby, the good (as it relates to the society) are those things that hold society together, and the wrong would be those things that tear society apart. To wit: murder, adultery, stealing, and bearing false witness against others.
You say he can not presume it...but you seem to mean he did; rather what you seem to mean is that if he does presume it his reasoning is not valid; if so you are using the priori that reason is objective to make this evaluation.
Trial and error in your example would have to do with discovering a moral system that is preferable to those with influence on its development. There are many such subsystems of morality, for example pork packages in legislatures being considered ok among experienced legislatures. But in real life, these examples are often degradations of morality rather than the discovery of it. Most of us judge pork to be unmoral. But then on a materialist view I am not sure how our judgement could be considered more valid than that of the pork peddling politician.
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