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Ch. 9: Moral Happiness

Please use this thread to discuss the above section of Lex Bayer and John Figdor’s “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century.”

You’re also welcome to create new threads however you see fit.

What do you think of the formulation of their 8th "non-commandment":

"We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy."

On p. 96, they write: "A person can be said to act in a moral manner if he or she derives a great deal of self-happiness from other people's happiness." This would seem to be a bit more controversial. You have to derive a "great deal" of self-happiness? How consequentialist should we be here? Of course, philosophers might pick apart what they mean by happiness as well.

Well, it's interesting anyway. I'm not sure what I think about it. They tell us that wanting to see others be happy is a product of our wiring, whereby we empathize with others and feel what they feel through mirror neurons. But if this is the case, why do we (apparently) need to be told make ourselves happy by seeing others be happy? The fact that they create the non-commandment you've quoted makes me think there is something else behind this, maybe even "duty," whose existence they have determined unreal. It does seem to me very hard to eradicate all notion of duty when it comes to morality. This might be the same as raising the possibility of ideals as motivating us at times, rather than a concern for our own happiness predicated on the happiness of others.