Posted on 09/13/2001 6:25:30 PM PDT by Nebullis
Coercion? I think you're getting at a determinism which excludes the uncertainty inherent in physical systems. But this is strange, coming from you that is. I might give you the same answer you might give someone who says free will is not possible with a God who is omniscient. There is an easy way around that, philosophically, so why belabor the point from a physical position where the requirement for fatalism is far less absolute?
Although you don't come out and say so, you seem to imply that morality exists outside of ourselves. I say it's an emergent function of our brain. Why? Is there a 'why' that applies here? What about 'How'? That's what this research study is aiming at. And if morality is not a function of our brains, where does morality reside and what structure of our brain perceives this morality? You are ultimately left to answer exactly the same questions you pose to me.
Whether the uncertainty observed in physical sytems is due to our lack of knowledge as to how they operate, or because they are intrincally uncertain, I do not know. In neither case though, can pure physical sytems account for nature of morality, with its attentendant concepts of free personal agency, accountablility, evil, praise, blame, intent, motive, volition, etc. Morality has a prescriptive nature, not a descriptive nature. Electrochemical pathways in the brain alone cannot account any notion of moral obligation and guilt in relation to persons. We do not assign praise or blame to chemical reactions or physical forces. The uncertainty principle, if that's what it is called, cannot itself account for the personal agency requisite of morality. Physical interactions, whether they are completely deterministic or not, are not right or wrong, they just are, and so they alone do not prescribe what 'ought' to be in a moral sense.
...if morality is not a function of our brains, where does morality reside and what structure of our brain perceives this morality? You are ultimately left to answer exactly the same questions you pose to me.
I do not deny that there is a correlation between our brains and morality (Bill and Hillary excepted), but I think that morality is more than a random combination of molecules in motion. If that's what moral rules are, then there is no reason to think that Jesus lived a praiseworthy life, or that Joseph Stalin was truly guilty; they were just operating on different synapses, so to speak, in the same way that your neurotransmitters might prefer chocolate ice cream and mine vanilla. If morality is entirely and solely a product of our brains then it is also entirely subjective and relative. There is no external standard.
I think that moral rules exist, even though they don't have physical properties. They are objective, and can be discovered, like other non-physical realities such as propositions, numbers, the laws of logic, etc. I think that impersonal forces such as chemicals and electricity cannot provide a basis for morality, because there is no obligation to obey a random or impersonal force. (How could an impersonal force issue a propositional command in the first place?) So that's why I think that morality is unintelligible without a personal God as the Source of that 'furniture of the universe'. Just my two cents worth.
Cordially,
You mean, Hillary?
Why not? We can change our level of guilt with a pill. A stroke will wipe out moral obligation. At most you can say that we don't yet know what, precisely, accounts for a notion of moral obligation or guilt, but we do know that the proper functioning of these features requires specific parts of the brain and specific neurochemicals.
We do not assign praise or blame to chemical reactions or physical forces.
That doesn't mean that the ability to assign praise or blame doesn't rest in these natural processes.
I do not deny that there is a correlation between our brains and morality, but I think that morality is more than a random combination of molecules in motion.
We already know that the action of these molecules is not random. Enfin, you say that there is something more than the molecules in our brains. There may be something outside the brain which has an affect on the brain. We could find out which parts of the brain it affects and how it does so. You see, in the end, whether we are looking for a morality receptor or a morality generator, the same questions can be asked.
I think that moral rules exist, even though they don't have physical properties. They are objective, and can be discovered, like other non-physical realities such as propositions, numbers, the laws of logic, etc.
There are moral rules which move beyond the intrinsic moral sensibility that all humans share. These also vary across cultures and are learned. But that's a different thing that what we are discussing.
Logic works because our brains work that way. Logic is a higher order expression of the physical properties of our brains. Clever people have layed them out in handy verbal or mathematical terms so that we can communicate them to each other. But these non-physical realities are exactly the result of the activity in our brains.
Why is it relative? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve heard this claim so often and I'm always confounded by them. Why is an external standard better than an internal one? The way in which our brains function is no less absolute than a communicated external standard. Just because you prefer vanilla over chocolate doesn’t mean that the taste buds are tasting anything other than vanilla or chocolate and transmitting that to your brain. A lot of people like some moral rules better than others, but that doesn’t mean that the rules are changed by that preference.
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