gbodor wrote:Does that resonate with anyone for a working definition here? If we are discussing morality, it is way too complicated to even get a foot hold I think.

That works. I'd hesitate to apply any concrete permanent definition though. Leave it loose for a while. Consider the potential evil acts of humans that raise chickens. Everything about the treatment of chickens is toward the purpose of survival, yet we all agree there are moral and immoral ways to do this - unnecessary cruelty, even when unintentional. But then, what is cruel and what is not cruel is not so clear cut as it would appear, since so many disagree on what is considered cruel in different areas.

When you zoom in on the demarcation, you see a gray area. And I'm sure the one I present regarding chickens is merely one of many.

Welcome to the conversation, and to Bootkalk!

Thx Interbane for the welcome! I would say that if a person unintentionally hurts a chicken it is not evil unless there were an outside force acting on the person or unconscious fear such as let's say for fun a demon. Then the act is not evil on behalf of the human, rather the demon and it is conscious which creates the question what is 'conscious" right?.

Some of the Hitler arguments can fall here when people claimed not to be aware of what exactly was happening to the Jews when they had never directly witnessed the cruelty their indirect acts supported such as roundups. For it to be evil a Naturalist in my opinion would say it had to be much more than an accident right or are they saying their is no such thing as evil?

I would consider myself a naturalist but I do at this point believe evil may exist as well. And then don't we get onto Jungian thought and ancestor as opposed to demon influence as a driving unconscious force?

g

Interbane wrote:

gbodor wrote:Does that resonate with anyone for a working definition here? If we are discussing morality, it is way too complicated to even get a foot hold I think.

That works. I'd hesitate to apply any concrete permanent definition though. Leave it loose for a while. Consider the potential evil acts of humans that raise chickens. Everything about the treatment of chickens is toward the purpose of survival, yet we all agree there are moral and immoral ways to do this - unnecessary cruelty, even when unintentional. But then, what is cruel and what is not cruel is not so clear cut as it would appear, since so many disagree on what is considered cruel in different areas.

When you zoom in on the demarcation, you see a gray area. And I'm sure the one I present regarding chickens is merely one of many.

Welcome to the conversation, and to Bootkalk!

I would say that if a person unintentionally hurts a chicken it is not evil unless there were an outside force acting on the person or unconscious fear such as let's say for fun a demon.

How do you tell the difference between when a demon is involved, and when no demon is involved?

Interbane wrote:This was sidetracked for a bit. Flann, have you thought about my earlier posts at all?

I think Interbane that you need to base your arguments on the standard evolutionary model of primate behaviour and how this develops.
You could use Robinson Crusoe maybe.You rule out behaviour towards animals but you can't really do this. He could eat fruit and vegetables rather than animals and could use cruel traps or other methods instead.He judges his own actions on these things and doesn't require a second opinion.
You suppose his actions are neither good nor evil until another human appears to judge it and they subjectively judge each other's actions.
What harms one is evil to the one harmed but may very well be good for the one killing him for territorial or survival advantage. And if he kills him what's wrong with that as humans are animals like other primates,just smarter?

Dawkins and Ruse are saying that evolution inexorably moulds our behaviours towards survival (of genes) and their disposable survival machines such as bodies.
Our moral behaviours of empathy,co-operation and competiton are programmed in genetically and by evolutionary success.
Co-operation and love are not objectively morally good and it's just an illusion to think they are. They are adaptations like any other physical adaptation for successful survival.
No one purposed or decreed such things.
You want to be a moral realist but insist these judgements are subjective.
I think there is an objective basis in the moral nature of humans as made in the image of God as well as in the broad principles of the commandments.
To do evil the Nazis had to rationalise it by branding Jews as parasites,and the claimed need of racial purity and living space. These rationalisations presuppose a need to justify what they would otherwise have to condemn as evil.
I don't see where you get moral realism on a naturalistic subjective basis since people are free to disagree and rationalise and who can say what anyone ought or ought not to do?
And if evolutionary survival is the great engine and purpose then whatever produces this has no moral basis at all.
Christian Greg Koukl argues for objective moral good and evil in this debate with John Baker who argues for subjective moral judgements.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=80fzNJNYhuM

Flann wrote:You rule out behaviour towards animals but you can't really do this.

I don't rule out behavior towards animals. I excluded it because it wasn't necessary for the explanation. I can explain how it pertains to animals as well, if you wish. But I suggest you digest the rest of my first post before that.

Flann wrote:I don't see where you get moral realism on a naturalistic subjective basis since people are free to disagree and rationalise and who can say what anyone ought or ought not to do?

Just because morality is subjective does not mean anything goes. Conversely, even if morality were objective, that also doesn't mean everyone will agree on what is moral and what isn't. The truth lies somewhere between the two. There is an objective truth to the game-theory algorithm of optimal behavior. A "free-floating rationale" as Dennett puts it. Yet we aren't forced into this behavior, but rather influenced, by our moral emotions, which are subjective. So in a sense, morality is quazi-subjective.

And if evolutionary survival is the great engine and purpose then whatever produces this has no moral basis at all.

Could you expand on this sentence in more detail? I couldn't figure out what you meant. Are you assuming something must produce morality?

Morality is man made, but not subjective.

Just like measurements.

a foot is an arbitrary measurement. It's a distance we've established to help us measure the real world. When someone comes along and says a foot is 4 inches long they are wrong. And they can be demonstrated to be wrong, even though they are only disagreeing with a standard established by other humans. They might describe distances in terms of meters and that doesn't make them wrong. So long as the conversion from a foot to a meter is accurate.

Measurements of this type are FOR getting correct distances between two objects. A distance that we can effectively communicated to someone else that can be translated into real-world distance. If someone attempts to use flavor as an interjection into the measurement system they are using a value that does not apply and has no input into the equations we can generate around distances.

Morality is likewise a system created by living beings and it is FOR living together with other living beings so that everyone can get along. The units of morality are the mental, physical well being of all the living beings in the environment. It is not as precisely defined as the meter or the foot, but it can definitely be measured inside wide error margins. If two kids both have their playdoh guys smashed by a bully, we can't determine exactly which child was more hurt, but the fact that they mentally suffered is evident and easy to observe.

When repercussions are more or less equivalent, or the results have such numerous consequences that they cannot be easily observed we can only give rough estimates of which was the "right" choice. This is equivalent in measurement of not having a unit smaller than an inch, with no concept of "half inch" for instance. But we can definitely see what is right when the consequences are obvious.

While eating with my friends in a restaurant, should I knock the tray of food out of the server's hands? Nope. That would make me an asshole. And the reasons why all go back to the mental and physical well being of everyone involved. The example of introducing flavor while trying to measure distance would be when we allow pressures that are not related to the mental, physical well being, or exploitation of any individual to subvert our moral reasoning.

Like "the bible says gays are evil" influencing us to vote against gay marriage. That is a bad moral move. Because the input is a flavor, not a distance. The things that matter in moral equations are how everyone else will feel.

Saying "well, some people don't care how others feel" doesn't mean they get to invent a different but equivalent morality. It means they are wrong in their moral choices. It's like only counting the apples with stems in a bucket. You are wrong about how many apples are in the bucket. Morality is specifically FOR dealing with how everyone will feel about an event, or choice. That's why we invented it. And that's why ignoring how others will feel about things leads to bad moral choices.

Thx Interbane. The point is to pull in your definition to exclude those possibilities but I would assume that there are folks out there who could go on and on about a demon. What do we know? Nothing really hence we define terms with boundaries not to be right but to be discussing the same thing.

gari

Interbane wrote:

I would say that if a person unintentionally hurts a chicken it is not evil unless there were an outside force acting on the person or unconscious fear such as let's say for fun a demon.

How do you tell the difference between when a demon is involved, and when no demon is involved?

What do we know? Nothing really hence we define terms with boundaries not to be right but to be discussing the same thing.

You say we know nothing, really. I disagree. It matters that we have criteria for demarcating knowledge from belief. Knowledge is belief, but it also must be justified and true. Many argue over what constitutes justification, but to say justification is impossible is taking things too far.

What I think your statement can be boiled down to is whether or not we need to be certain of something in order to say it is justified as knowledge. We don't. The best we can do is a high level of confidence, which there is unfortunately no way to quantify.

So what constitutes justification? There are many ways that knowledge can be acquired and justified, but unfortunately these ways are frowned upon by the religious minded. Science and logic, to be more exact.

People believe demons exist. First off, just because people believe something doesn't mean there is truth to their belief. So we examine the justification for their belief. A thorough examination of all the most popular justifications shows there is absolutely no support for the existence of demons. The anecdotes involved all point to natural causes, in spite of claims to the contrary.

My point isn't to pull in my definition so that a large number of things fall outside it. My point is that there is no justification for the boundary to ever have been pushed so far out in the first place. Human history shows that we almost unanimously err on the side of over-belief. From modern myths to ancient myths to folklore to conspiracy theories or crackjob science, we're a breeding pool of false ideas and beliefs.

Even the reality of gravity is in question and time and space only exist as humans construct it hence, everything we believe we know is only as good as the information we have available and how we desire to interpret this, hence the comment we know nothing. The spin of an electron around a nucleus is influenced by the viewer so who am I to say that someone else cannot truly justify the existence of energy having a negative motion that some might interpret with religious connotation. Language is even more limited than the human mind so where are we going here now with the nature of evil for there are only absolutes if one chooses to believe they have all the facts. No such place exists without exceptions. I love science, it's my thing, and it's all about probability, not for sure. That is a big mistake to apply to logic being flawless.

gbodor wrote:The spin of an electron around a nucleus is influenced by the viewer

The electron is influenced by the fact that a photon must strike it in order to "view" it. It is called the observer affect, and is when an instrument influences the thing it is measuring. There is nothing mysterious here, other than the mysterious nature of quantum physics itself. The observer effect is also found when you check the pressure of a bike tire. Every time you test the pressure, you influence how much air is inside, since a small amount escapes.

Language is even more limited than the human mind so where are we going here now with the nature of evil for there are only absolutes if one chooses to believe they have all the facts. No such place exists without exceptions.

Exactly. Certainty is foolish. But that does not mean anything goes. We are justified in having varying amounts of confidence. We can be more confident in the truth of the statement "the sun will continue to exist through the end of the day tomorrow" than we can of the statement "it will rain tomorrow".

Logic is not absolute, but it never claimed to be, and anyone who claims that it is does not truly understand it. Still, this does not mean anything goes. This does not mean we abandon logic and science as the most useful tools for interrogating reality. We can do no better, but that doesn't mean we should resign to do worse.

We can make statements regarding the nature of evil, and they can be more or less true than other statements. Nothing absolute or certain, but we know from the start that our goal isn't absolute certainty or absolute knowledge. Those are foolish goals. Our knowledge will always be provisional, since even realists admit our inability to have absolute certainty.