Good is what makes people better off and evil is what makes them worse off.
When we feel we ought to do some things and not other things, is that obligation real? ...
The feeling that you're obliged to do A but not B is real. I think we can agree on that. It's part of that innate, objective human nature I talked about. We want to get along with others, it's normal.
But I think the answers to the rest of your questions are unknowable. Tell me what test I can do to decide if I have some real moral duty to the universe? Maybe someday it will be possible for us to answer the question. Maybe we'll discover the universe has a real moral rule. But maybe not. I can't say.
If morality is just convention...
It's not just convention as I thought I'd made clear in my first post to you on the thread.
But that isn't the whole story. I think there is a real, objective human nature, behavioral traits shared by all, some few abnormal people excepted. Hierarchical social structures is an example. Morality builds upon, or tends to respect, these shared values.
Forgive me edsheppa, but it seems to me that you have no moral duty "to the universe"; your moral duty is owed to God -- who made you, and endued you with your human nature, making you in His image, and thus endowing you with reason and free will.
There is a "test" for this, BTW. But that test is not given in "this world"....
I'm very much enjoying your exchange of ideas with Diamond! Thank you for writing!
Hi edsheppa! The above statement reduces morality to utility. Yet the moral law requires us to "do the right thing," regardless of utilitarian considerations. In a nutshell: The moral law says it is better to do the right thing even if it costs us, than to do the wrong thing and benefit from the wrong. Selfish people will tend to act for their own benefit regardless of considerations of how others may be harmed by their actions. Such behavior is justly condemned as immoral. A good and just society must condemn such behavior or the society would not long remain either good or just.
Yes, I do agree.
But I think the answers to the rest of your questions are unknowable. Tell me what test I can do to decide if I have some real moral duty to the universe? Maybe someday it will be possible for us to answer the question. Maybe we'll discover the universe has a real moral rule. But maybe not. I can't say.
But this is the heart of the matter. I phrased the question the way I did because you cannot owe a moral duty toward a thing. You can only owe moral duty to a person. Further, to say that you can't say is essentially an epistemological claim that there is not enough information for you to be in a position to know whether or not the universe has a real moral law. But since you are a finite being and cannot have searched everywhere you are not in a position to say with any certainty that that there is not enough information for you to be able to know.
A precondition of objective morality is a personal cause of the universe. If the cause of the universe was impersonal, there can be no objective morality because morality entails, among other things, (including freedom) personal commands from, and accountability to, an authoritative source of those commands. A purely materialistic, physical, impersonal origin of the universe offers no foundation all for any of these necessary preconditions of objective morality.
As I said to UndauntedR, mere descriptions of bi-pedal animals that act in certain ways because they have been conditioned to act that way, that you have labeled "morality" is not morality at all. The reason I think you have not and cannot provide a rationally coherent and consistent account of morality is that you have to rely on all sorts of things that are logically precluded by your presuppositions.
If materialism is 'true' in the end it does not matter what values you choose, utilitarian rationality applied to "innate human values" and feelings and transmitted as culture, or not, for there is no right and wrong; good and evil do not exist and all actions are morally indifferent, amounting to nothing more than fungible, subjective, personal preference.
Cordially,