But then he seems to make the mistake of assuming that because we can't prove truth to complete conceptual satisfaction within the human box, the matter of whether or not someone is outside the box doesn't matter to him.
I'd ask him, why is it that truth is so important to us, yet we realize we are too limited to be certain of it by what we can discover depending strictly upon our conceptual souls?
Well, it doesn't matter to me, because the question of whether someone is outside the box is ultimately a question of where we should start understanding what morality is or should be. I'm a results-oriented kind of person, and so it seems to me that the ultimate goal of morality is to make us better people and to make the world a better place - the question of whether moral propositions are true or not is ultimately less interesting than the question of whether they are useful or not, in no small part because the question of truth does not appear to be amenable to investigation. I could be wrong, but I think I'm pretty well insulated against being proven wrong any time soon ;)
Are you sure you even want to use the word "ultimate" then? But I don't want to fault find, especially with one who's got such a refreshingly clear level of intellectual honesty.
(I'm results oriented too. And of course, I'd say I think you've described a very, very important secondary use of morality and that morality's most important use for us is to instruct us that we are disconnected with where morality starts. So disconnected that morality's source may even seem unapparent.)
Now, at this point, having laid out my cards, I've probably managed to create a platform that very few people are actually interested in occupying - objectivists will pretty clearly object to my dismissal of objectivism, and if you look at it, you'll probably see that this position is rather dismissive of theistic brands of morality for pretty much the same reasons. Everybody tends to ask themselves "is X true?", and the answer to that question will determine your starting point for what morality is based on and what it ultimately is. But the question of "is X true?" does not seem to me to be fruitful, and so I ask myself "is X useful?"
(ibid.)
So really, the question you're asking me is "why is ultimate truth so important to other people?"
Well, I really asked about truth, but I think morality is an excellent subset and case in point. And I really didn't distinguish between ultimate truth and any kind of truth that we can know for what it is.
And for that, I have several answers.
One is that the ultimate truth about morality really exists and really is discoverable, and sooner or later someone will hit on it, and that humans have an instinctive sense that this goal is attainable. I tend to doubt that one myself, but I can't really honestly dismiss it either, so I at least consider it a possibility, albeit a rather remote one.
O-k. (I think that if nobody has come across the ultimate truth about morality by now, might as well forget about it. I'm certainly not an "Enlightenment" type, though their failed experiments are useful.) About that instinctive sense, it seems so strong as to be at least a subjective need, if not an objective one, however remote fulfillment of the need so obviously is.
The second answer is that people concern themselves with ultimate truth not because it is necessarily discoverable, but because the act of investigating it is itself inherently worthwhile in some objective sense - the act of investigating ultimate truth serves to improve us in some objective fashion, even if we never actually attain it. And further, that we know this to be true and act upon this true belief. I suspect that this will prove to be a rather popular option, particularly since I've seen it expressed nearly verbatim in places.
Well I see that the pursuit of truth is laudable; even "necessary for our survival," or at least for our weller-being. Continuous improvement is thought possible up to at least "six sigma" in the business world, but entrepreneurs are optimistic people and their employees are paid to be. But the pursuit of anything impossible to pursue to completion can be very dangerous as betty boop's Marx post pointed out, and it is certainly frustrating to that innate sense of the ultimate that we humans have.
The third answer is somewhat more cynical, in that humans are concerned with the question of ultimate truth because of what it brings about within them in a somewhat more selfish sense than the second answer. People investigate ultimate truth, whether it is or is not really knowable, because they like the subjective feeling of security and knowledge that it engenders in them - whether consciously or unconsciously, they do it because they like the warm and fuzzy feeling that insider information usually brings.
Yes, whether or not it is truly known, it is comfortable to think we are connected with the ultimate. I think that gets back to the idea that ultimate knowledge (if it exists, of course) is relational in nature to we beings who are relational in nature and that it is thoroughly natural for us to be deeply and thoroughly connected with the ultimate; so deeply that it delves deeper than our conscious capacities (but so thoroughly that it includes them). I think this is a need so critically important for us that we will make up ways to fool ourselves into fulfilling it and believe mistruths we are told about it, if we don't happen to find what we may find of, and accept the truth of, what truly comes from whoever devised that relationship.
And the fourth possibility that I see is the most cynical of all - people are interested in ultimate truth simply as a means to a preferred end. Consciously or unconsciously, ultimate truth is treated as a stick to beat people with. That's a rather ugly thought, but people can be rather ugly sometimes, notions of morality notwithstanding ;)
Yes indeed; that is very clear to me, too. To add to the culpability, I suspect this is the counterfiet mockery of the truth: that ultimate truth is, for us at present, a means to an end preferred for us by the one with the carrot, beautiful as he is.
I tend to look at things through a pragmatic lens, so it's probably fair to say that this colors what I see as the "ultimate" reason for morality to exist - as you can see, what I call the "ultimate" reason has a decidedly practical tendency to it. But it's perfectly possible to envision other reasons for morality to exist, even reasons that may supersede the purely practical benefits of it - e.g., "morality is God's way of bringing us closer to Him". And I can hardly avoid admitting that my judgment of why morality is important is no better than anyone else's - I don't claim any special insight into these things, after all.
But on the other hand, if we arrive in the same place, does it really matter if we started from different points? For example, if someone takes the view that A) God exists, and; B) God says that murder is wrong, therefore; C) murder is, in fact, wrong - is it necessary for me to accept A and B before I can accept C? I'm not at all sure that it is necessary - such a person might take A and B as axiomatic, and derive C from them, whereas I could take some other thing as axiomatic and still arrive at the same destination. I might posit as axiomatic that I don't want to be murdered, and add some other derivative postulates, such as B) in a society that considers murder acceptable, I am likely to be murdered - I trust that we can see how we might reason such a thing out - and therefore C) we should treat murder as wrong, in order to avoid B coming to pass. And so I think it's entirely possible to come to a shared understanding of a common set of moral tenets, even if we ultimately disagree on where those tenets are derived from.
You might say that murder is wrong because God says that it's wrong, I might say that we should treat murder as wrong because of my own personal preference not to be murdered, some other person might say that murder is wrong because Ganesha says that it's wrong, and some fourth party might conclude that murder is self-evidently wrong, for no other reason beyond that. But the important thing is that we all agree on the basic moral tenet that murder is or should be forbidden, even if we all have different reasons for arriving at that conclusion.
Now, that's a pretty easy case - we're not likely to run into too many people who wish to argue that murder isn't forbidden or shouldn't be forbidden. But not all tenets are likely to be so easy to arrive at a consensus. Consider moral propositions about something like polygamy for a moment - it seems that God is pretty clear to most people that you're only supposed to have one spouse, but on the other hand, Allah is taken to be saying that a man can have up to four wives, and there are certain fringe Mormons who still believe that a man can have as many wives as he likes. As for me, practical fellow that I am, I'd want to sit down and examine the situation before rendering an opinion on the subject, and any such opinion would depend on what I saw as the ultimate goals of society - if I thought of orderly society and family stability as the paramount goals of society, I would probably conclude that polygamy should be banned. If, on the other hand, I thought that the paramount goal of society was to maximize individual liberty, I would probably conclude that polygamy should be permitted. Or, as is the actual case, if I conclude that both order and liberty are important goals, then I will have to sit down and weigh the two against each other, to decide whether polygamy does more harm to the cause of order than forbidding polygamy does to the cause of liberty - which it probably does.
This is sort of what I see as the great advantage and the great failing of this system I have - it's very flexible. Maybe too flexible for most people, which is why I don't evangelize. But I think I can make the case that in order to have peace, people must be permitted to freely congregate and associate with those of like minds, and form communities based on shared values and goals. I think that most people will instinctively see the benefits of that, and for others, they can perhaps be persuaded to take it as axiomatic. That way, even if we really can't agree on what our moral tenets should be, we can at least go our separate ways in peace. We don't have to like each other, we don't even really have to figure out how to get along in that case - in the very worst case, all we have to agree on is to leave each other alone. So maybe I should take the right to be left alone as axiomatic - what do you think? ;)
(I think that if nobody has come across the ultimate truth about morality by now, might as well forget about it. I'm certainly not an "Enlightenment" type, though their failed experiments are useful.)
I think you're probably right, but the possibility of mass epiphany cannot be dismissed altogether, I suppose...
Well I see that the pursuit of truth is laudable; even "necessary for our survival," or at least for our weller-being. Continuous improvement is thought possible up to at least "six sigma" in the business world, but entrepreneurs are optimistic people and their employees are paid to be. But the pursuit of anything impossible to pursue to completion can be very dangerous as betty boop's Marx post pointed out, and it is certainly frustrating to that innate sense of the ultimate that we humans have.
Perhaps, but I think that someone of that mind might tend to take a Zen-like approach, that regards the journey as the important thing, and not the destination. In that sort of view, enlightenment is not something you attain by getting somewhere, enlightenment is attained simply by walking the path. Or, if the Buddhist overtones are a bit much, then one might regard the striving to understand truth as resulting in self-improvement, even if a final and complete understanding never comes. Some people may be disappointed by that, but one can always take heart in the thought that such a journey is important for the here and now, but that ultimate truth may be on tap in the afterlife for those who seek it now. I certainly can't prove otherwise ;)