Question about secular morality

[Spoonist]

As has been said earlier, all the defenses of secular morality in this thread has been a constant abuse of the naturalistic fallacy, with a large heaping of ad hominem attacks on those who question this point of view. Destructionator seems to be one of the only people on the side putting forth affirmative answers that admits that morality does ultimately come from arbitrary assumptions. Everyone else is either making ad hominem attacks about a lack of empathy, or arguing that since this is how we evolved this is how it should be, but an ought cannot be derived from an is.

Why don't you rewrite that with some more caveats and a lot less broad generalizations?
No, "all the defenses" did not abuse the naturalistic fallacy.
No, D13 was not the only one to admit that morality is arbitrary.
No, "everyone else" was not making ad hominems or appeal to evolution.
Yes, you can derive an ought from an is, its called philosophy.

Furthermore, for those who say that it would be better for everyone to live in a moral society, while this may be true, this does not go on to show how it is better for each individual to be moral within that society. This presents a free rider problem on society as a whole, as it would be in the interest of each individual to be immoral as long as they could get away with it, as long as society as a whole continued to be moral.

This is redundant. The free rider is no exception, instead that free rider is also better off for living in a moral society. In fact if the society wasn't 'moral' the free rider couldn't exist. So its in the best interest of ALL including the free rider's that the society stay moral. Thus a moral society handles a-moral behavior.
This part isn't difficult you know, its the basics of all pack animals.
Again, old stuff, go read a book or something.

[Legault]

As a new poster who doesn't want to tread on the toes of long-time members, I'll just add a few things to the discussion as respectfully as I can:

First, Christianity is being badly misrepresented. This isn't surprising- it happens on just about every internet community- but as an atheist myself, I feel that shooting down a strawman only makes your own side look weaker. So here's a clarification, for whatever it's worth: "Christianity" is a complex web of interrelated and mutually dependent concepts and ideologies that have grown and developed organically. For this topic specifically, there is no "Christian" notion for the basis of moral responsibility. Catholics, for example, would offer up the metaphor that sin is crime, and crime necessitates punishment. Orthodox Christians, however, would instead offer up the metaphor of sin as sickness; in other words, one isn't moral to appease the arbitrary will of some petty God, but rather to achieve greater spiritual health based on the guidance of an omniscient and transcendental intelligence.

In short, the "God shall smite you like a bug"-type posts are damagingly oversimplifying at best, flat-out wrong at worst. Best to steer clear of them unless you know the specifics of an interlocutor's religion.
---
Second, and much more importantly, the OP raised a very, very difficult question, which wasn't taken with the kind of gravity it deserves. Nihilism, its consequences, and any chance at its overcoming are among the most ambitious questions to solve in all of philosophy, and they can't be solved with accessible humanistic drivel. For example...

The simple answer to your question is "I would find it difficult to live a happy life knowing my happiness was largely and intentionally founded upon the suffering of others", because I'm not an immoral shitstain.

This is not a rational argument; it's a baseless ad hominem straight from the Dawkins/Hitchens handbook of bad philosophy. Just my own two cents, but answering this question properly requires one to put down Utilitarianism and pick up Zarathustra.

[Darth Wong]

I've always found systems of secular morality to be difficult, and often unsatisfactory, on an intellectual level. Yes, religious systems of morality are deeply flawed as well (Euthyphro dilemma, etc.), but anecdotally at least, I find that most people have an easier time accepting the legitimacy of religious systems of morality.

"difficult" and "unsatisfactory" are subjective and emotional reactions based on prejudice or competence.

The problem is that ethical and moral systems are about oughts; and oughts only have meaning within the context of a goal.

Precisely. This begs the question: what is the goal of morality? And if you look at the origins of morality, it's obvious that the goal of morality is group prosperity and survival. Just look at today's Quote of the Week.

The reason religious systems of morality tend to appear more legitimate to most people is because the ought is usually prescribed by the same divine Being that created humanity. This belief framework creates a clear goal: everyone should fall in line with the Creator's will because this will maximize everyone's happiness on both an individual level (rewards in the afterlife), and on a societal level.

So a religion will appear to be legitimate once you choose to believe in it? That's a tautology.

Secular systems of morality can attempt something similar by arguing that everyone should behave altruistically, because widespread altruism tends to maximize everyone's individual happiness.

It's interesting that you assume all secular systems of morality assume the goal is "individual happiness", when that is not in fact true at all. Secular systems of morality tend to reflect the tribal collective nature of the origins of morality. The problem is that the vast American cultural propaganda machine has been promoting the idea that "collective" = "evil" for decades. You need to accept that social morality is a naturally collective concept.

We really have to acknowledge that a completely secular system of morality is a tough sell to a civilization that's used to just anchoring their absolute rights and wrongs in the will of a divine Mind.

No, we have to acknowledge that secular morality is a tough sell to a society that hates collectivism to the point of blind irrationality. The culture of "fierce individualism" is naturally hostile to civic values and secular morality, because it is naturally selfish. A society which promotes selfishness will always be more friendly to Christian morality because Christian morality is based on a one-on-one relationship between the individual and a divine being, and the rest of society can go fuck itself.

[Scrib]

I personally don't think that there is a rational argument against nihilism. Secular morality is at times just as irrational and arbitrary as it's religious counterpart.The only difference is that often times we choose the places where we are arbitrary instead of some unseen deity or it's "representation" on Earth.

I think a lot of us start from being empathic, irrational beings and try to work backwards and create a utilitarian system morality around that fact. However this raises questions when there is no benefit to being good and yet people still do it anyway. The question was asked on the previous page and I'll ask it again,from a purely logical perspective why would one not act evil if there were no consequences? And please no appeals to emotion or trying to paint the answer as a self-evident truth.

[Darth Wong]

I personally don't think that there is a rational argument against nihilism. Secular morality is at times just as irrational and arbitrary as it's religious counterpart.The only difference is that often times we choose the places where we are arbitrary instead of some unseen deity or it's "representation" on Earth.

I think a lot of us start from being empathic, irrational beings and try to work backwards and create a utilitarian system morality around that fact. However this raises questions when there is no benefit to being good and yet people still do it anyway. The question was asked on the previous page and I'll ask it again,from a purely logical perspective why would one not act evil if there were no consequences? And please no appeals to emotion or trying to paint the answer as a self-evident truth.

Arguments like this are precisely why I have to keep pointing out that "individualistic" morality is a contradiction in terms. All morality is social; a man living alone on an island would have no use for morality.

Once you accept that morality is a social construct designed for collective benefit, then you see how nihilism doesn't work at all. Nihilism asks "why should I care about morality": a question that the oxymoronically named "individualistic morality" cannot answer except by inventing Santa Claus or some other magical enforcer. But social morality has a simple answer: "we don't give a shit whether you agree; this is good for society and the majority of us who have the normal tribal sympathetic wiring, and if you don't like it, fuck you".

[Scrib]

I personally don't think that there is a rational argument against nihilism. Secular morality is at times just as irrational and arbitrary as it's religious counterpart.The only difference is that often times we choose the places where we are arbitrary instead of some unseen deity or it's "representation" on Earth.

I think a lot of us start from being empathic, irrational beings and try to work backwards and create a utilitarian system morality around that fact. However this raises questions when there is no benefit to being good and yet people still do it anyway. The question was asked on the previous page and I'll ask it again,from a purely logical perspective why would one not act evil if there were no consequences? And please no appeals to emotion or trying to paint the answer as a self-evident truth.

Arguments like this are precisely why I have to keep pointing out that "individualistic" morality is a contradiction in terms. All morality is social; a man living alone on an island would have no use for morality.

Once you accept that morality is a social construct designed for collective benefit, then you see how nihilism doesn't work at all. Nihilism asks "why should I care about morality": a question that the oxymoronically named "individualistic morality" cannot answer except by inventing Santa Claus or some other magical enforcer. But social morality has a simple answer: "we don't give a shit whether you agree; this is good for society and the majority of us who have the normal tribal sympathetic wiring, and if you don't like it, fuck you".

How does social morality being unconcerned with individual beliefs negate nihilism?

Perhaps I misunderstood you and you simply mean that on a practical level social morality is a group pressure that will exist without need for any justifications but on paper both seem to be able to live together just fine.

[Darth Wong]

When I said "nihilism doesn't work at all", I meant that it doesn't work as a rebuttal of social morality. It only works as a rebuttal of individualistic morality which, as stated above, is a joke anyway.

[K. A. Pital]

Individual morality is idiocy indeed. Morality is always a social relation.

Considering the real documented cases about feral children, morality is not only a purely social relation in theory, but also absolutely impossible in practice without a human society. Feral children grow up and exhibit animal behaviour without a shred of knowledge of ethics and/or morality. This makes the ideas of a divine morality preposterous. Morality is purely an artificial social construct created for the benefit of the homo sapiens society. It does not and cannot exist outside the society.

[Spoonist]

@Stas Bush
Nitpicks.
1) Relative morality exists among all social animals and even some insects, it's not just homo sapiens. See monkeys and apes for starters, then move to crow birds, etc, etc. Its a slippery slope of where to place the line at what constitutes morality. Some place it higher and exclude insects some place it lower and include them, but all agree that primates and some social birds do have them.
2) Feral children also exhibit relative morality in relation to their environment. Sure they don't get the complexities, but they definately know the difference between mine & yours for instance. They don't kill indiscriminately etc.
3) It's not a "purely" artificial construct since some of it is genetically inherited, the same as other social behaviour like language. Lots of the basics of our own moral construct relies on instinct. This is why sociopaths exist at all.
4) And yes it can and does exist outside of the society itself, but agreed that it is a derative of society. For instance birds raised without any social interaction will display "moral" behavior when introduced to the 'pack'. Less so, but still there.
etc
Maybe you want to put in a definer like, "philosophical" morality, which would rely on reasoning for your statements to be true.

[K. A. Pital]

Social animals have morality? Really? The behaviour is completely determined by instincts, which makes the question of morality as a social relation between animals moot. A bird would behave much the same even removed from a bird collective.

Feral children exhibit no social morality. They can kill more or less indiscriminately (simply because their evaluation of life is heavily based on animal instincts at best, without a shred of more advanced concepts) and thus will attack anything outside the pack. One can say that wolves are behaving "morally" since they care for offspring and kill discriminately - i.e. avoid attacking ones from their own pack, but this would be simply stretching the definition of morality and expanding it to areas where it is useless. Instincts already fully determine a wolf's behaviour towards pack, prey and other elements of his surrounding. Morality is excessive. By that logic, no animals are immoral and even plants exhibit morality.

That's pretty damn stupid.

Lots of the basics of our own moral construct relies on instinct. This is why sociopaths exist at all.

Sociopathy does not preclude one from behaving in a moral fashion. If an animal would be born with impaired instincts, that would be the end of him. That is all I have to say here. The analogy is patenty false and demonstrates once again that human social relation called "morality" can function even with impaired instincts, while "morality" of animals is fully determined by instincts.

For instance birds raised without any social interaction will display "moral" behavior when introduced to the 'pack'. Less so, but still there.

Exactly. Which makes it pretty much pointless to call this "morality". Caring for offspring is simply a natural behaviour for some animals (though not for others) as a means to increase survivability. Others may behave in a fashion which humans might find "immoral" (say, sexual cannibalism), but so what? By your logic, that is also a moral behaviour.

Like I said, morality makes sense only in terms of social relations and in a society of sentient beings.

[Spoonist]

Go take it with the behavioral scientists then, as I said :
"Maybe you want to put in a definer like, "philosophical" morality, which would rely on reasoning for your statements to be true."
For basic morality you are dead wrong.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildli ... wrong.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... eview.html

http://scholar.google.se/scholar?q=anim ... G=S%C3%B6k

[Legault]

Arguments like this are precisely why I have to keep pointing out that "individualistic" morality is a contradiction in terms. All morality is social; a man living alone on an island would have no use for morality.

I could not disagree with this any more strongly. Let's consider the loose definition of "morality" agreed upon earlier: a code of conduct designed with a particular goal in mind. The Christian follows the teachings of the Bible (code) to get closer to God (goal); the humanist follows the teachings of modern philosophers like Locke and Mill (code) to try and create a more pleasurable state/society (goal); etc.

There is no reason I can think of why this schema couldn't apply equally to a man stranded on a deserted island. Even without other people to interact with, a man must continue to make choices and value judgments about himself and his surroundings, such as "Is it okay to kill other life to sustain my own survival?" Formulating this formally: an isolated man strives to act in a specific way (code) in order to live a life he or she finds optimal or acceptable (goal).

It's worth noting that the first formalized book on morality (Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics) deals exclusively with an individual's pursuit of the good life. To argue that morality cannot play a role on the individual level is to uproot the entire tradition of Western value theory, which is going to take a good deal of backing up for anyone to take seriously.

[Academia Nut]

The Christian follows the teachings of the Bible (code) to get closer to God (goal); the humanist follows the teachings of modern philosophers like Locke and Mill (code) to try and create a more pleasurable state/society (goal); etc

I think you need to back up here for a second and re-evaluate your thinking for a moment, because you are making a fundamental error here, namely that secular people think differently from religious people. This sort of metathinking, to consider your own thought patterns and structures, is extremely difficult for most people to grasp, but also incredibly useful for debates since it allows you to actually think about what the other side is actually saying and thinking. The fact that you are projecting your own mental structures onto others is very clear here.

There are no teachers or codes in secular morality and ethics.

Oh, there are philosophers and the like, but part of the fundamental structure of secular morality is that it utterly rejects fiat declarations and seeks to construct systems that stem only from naturalistic phenomenon. This runs into the problem that nature does not give a flying fuck what anything actually does outside of a purely mechanistic perspective. The world is cruel and uncaring and utterly without morality on such a level it is actually alien to our normal perspective. However, instead of going down a nihilistic path, we must look at what our instincts are telling us and why we evolved those instincts in the first place. We must also make a judgment on what the actual goals of our system of morality are, which is essentially arbitrary, but the attempt is made to be somewhat less arbitrary than religious sets of morality.

What all of this sums up to is that theoretically, we should be able to burn down all of the works of all the secular philosophers in the world and be able to reconstruct their arguments from scratch. This is in fact what most secular people do, they come to their own conclusions as to what is right and wrong based around the world around them. Let us look at the axioms that they typically use:

1.) From an evolutionary group dynamic perspective, pro-social behaviour increases group fitness typically at the cost of personal fitness, but here is the kicker: a more fit group tends to increase the personal fitness of all members, usually by a larger degree than the cost associated with living in the group instead of living selfishly. This means that we have a multitude of mechanisms both biological and social that serve to encourage pro-social behaviour and discourage anti-social behaviour. Thus from an evolutionary perspective and a purely selfish one, pro-social behaviour is advantageous and should be encouraged.

2.) Our capacity for empathy means that we can vicariously feel the pains and joys of others by comparing their experiences to our own and imagining what is going on in their heads. This means that for non-sociopaths, we tend to feel bad when others suffer and feel good when others succeed. Thus as a purely arbitrary goal, we decide that since we dislike suffering and like joy we should minimize the one and maximize the other. There are of course caveats and subtleties to that to avoid some of the absurdities brought up by certain branches of utilitarianism, but still, that's the goal.

And that is pretty much the axioms that modern secular thinkers use to create their systems of morality. Pro-social behaviour benefits the group and a stronger group means a stronger individual, and suffering sucks so we should minimize that. That is it. There are no prophets, no men coming out of the desert to make proclamations from on high, just a bunch of people starting with those ideas or ideas like them and all independently coming to the same or similar conclusions. It is a completely different basis for morality than religiously based, which is ultimately "Because God said so", which is why it scares so many people: there is no one authority saying that it is so, that it is true. It feels impermanent to people, feels like it is constructed on air and so they recoil from the idea. But guess what: to secularists religious morality is constructed on less than air because they outright reject the authority of the religious figures. For atheists and agnostics, there is nothing in the Bible or any other religious text that will convince them because they do not see the Word of God but a bunch of stories assembled by people in the bronze age to either codify old behaviours or give some advantage for ruling castes over illiterate farmers and shepherds.

So if you want to continue this argument, you need to pause and consider what the secularists are actually thinking and why think the way they think.

[Darth Wong]

Arguments like this are precisely why I have to keep pointing out that "individualistic" morality is a contradiction in terms. All morality is social; a man living alone on an island would have no use for morality.

I could not disagree with this any more strongly. Let's consider the loose definition of "morality" agreed upon earlier: a code of conduct designed with a particular goal in mind. The Christian follows the teachings of the Bible (code) to get closer to God (goal); the humanist follows the teachings of modern philosophers like Locke and Mill (code) to try and create a more pleasurable state/society (goal); etc.

Well, that's what the advertising says. In reality, the Christian discards most of the teachings of the Bible as convenient.

There is no reason I can think of why this schema couldn't apply equally to a man stranded on a deserted island. Even without other people to interact with, a man must continue to make choices and value judgments about himself and his surroundings, such as "Is it okay to kill other life to sustain my own survival?" Formulating this formally: an isolated man strives to act in a specific way (code) in order to live a life he or she finds optimal or acceptable (goal).

Optimal for what? Individual survival? That's the same morality that a bear has. Unless you're saying that every living thing on Earth has a morality code, this makes no sense.

It's worth noting that the first formalized book on morality (Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics) deals exclusively with an individual's pursuit of the good life. To argue that morality cannot play a role on the individual level is to uproot the entire tradition of Western value theory, which is going to take a good deal of backing up for anyone to take seriously.

Yes, exactly. I am uprooting the entire tradition of western value theory, which I think is full of shit. And no, the fact that it has a long tradition does not make it automatically credible or superior. Why should it automatically be taken seriously just because western people have been doing it for a long time? The whole point of the Enlightenment was to recognize that thousands of years of these wonderful "traditional" ways had not actually resulted in a moral society. The entire Enlightenment was about "uprooting" venerable traditions.

[Bakustra]

Academia Nut, you misunderstood Legault's point entirely- the argument is that ultimately morality is simply a code designed for a particular goal- a secularist may develop their code based on their own conclusions, or those of John Stuart Mill, but it is still a code designed for a particular goal.

DW, your argument as I see it is that the entire tradition of moral philosophy is invalid because you believe it to be so (because, after all, moral codes that guide the individual are hardly unique to Western civilization- indeed, the great moral systems of China are all based on what individuals should do, even if Confucian thought argues that individuals should do this or that for the benefit of society as a whole), irrelevant nitpicking, and a misunderstanding of Legault's argument. Or perhaps you didn't misunderstand it- what is morality, if it isn't a code designed to guide one to a particular goal? In any case, I think that something greater than your personal distaste for philosophy should be necessary to throw out its entire tradition from consideration, frankly.

[Darth Wong]

It's interesting how "western value theory" became "moral philosophy" in your rebuttal. Since when are western moral philosophies the only moral philosophies? I never said that all moral philosophies are bunk; I specifically criticized traditional western individualistic moral philosophy.

As for "throwing out its entire tradition", you're full of shit. The appeal to tradition is a fallacy; rather than asking why I dismiss it, perhaps you should ask why you're expecting me to respect it. If you want to justify something, you'd better come up with something better than the fact that it's traditional.

As I said, and you ignored, Legault's argument could just as easily be applied to a bear.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The behaviour is completely determined by instincts,

Where is your proof of this? Or, conversely, your proof that human behavior is NOT determined by instincts?

A bird would behave much the same even removed from a bird collective.

This is patently false, and flies in the face of decades of behavioral biology. No reason to make stuff up because it fits your preconceived notions. Removing any social animal from its context has incredibly detrimental effects on its behavior. Luckily you bring up birds, and I happen to work with social birds (parakeets, canaries, and finches), and there are dozens of studies in the literature about the impact of isolation on their behavior and communication. In fact, in some cases the impact is quite severe, resulting in incredibly irrational behavior. Social constructs in animals are learned/taught, not innate. This was proven decades ago.

One can say that wolves are behaving "morally" since they care for offspring and kill discriminately - i.e. avoid attacking ones from their own pack, but this would be simply stretching the definition of morality and expanding it to areas where it is useless.

Because you say so, right?

Instincts already fully determine a wolf's behaviour towards pack, prey and other elements of his surrounding.

Proof? What constitutes an 'instinct' anyway, according to your world view? Why don't all wolves act exactly the same, if they are driven solely bi instinct? What accounts for all the incredible variation in behavior between wild and domestic wolves, wolves of different species, wolves of different packs, or different individuals within the same breeding population?

[Darth Wong]

Bears don't make choices and value judgments like he was talking about.

What makes you think bears don't make choices and value judgments? The fact that they're not very intelligent, or highly driven by instinct? For that matter, what makes you think humans actually make conscious choices and value judgments instead of relying mostly on instinct and then wallpapering over it with self-serving post-hoc rationalizations?

[Darth Wong]

Instincts already fully determine a wolf's behaviour towards pack, prey and other elements of his surrounding.

Proof? What constitutes an 'instinct' anyway, according to your world view? Why don't all wolves act exactly the same, if they are driven solely bi instinct? What accounts for all the incredible variation in behavior between wild and domestic wolves, wolves of different species, wolves of different packs, or different individuals within the same breeding population

Instinct does not mean "intra-species uniformity". Individual members of a species can have a range of traits, even genetically. Instinct can also interact with environment and history to produce various results.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Instinct does not mean "intra-species uniformity". Individual members of a species can have a range of traits, even genetically. Instinct can also interact with environment and history to produce various results.

I realize this. But the way Stas is using it is as a hand-waiving device to essentially dismiss the entire field of animal cognition and behavioral biology. I was just driving his logic towards its natural conclusion, which is absurd. Honestly, 'instinct' is not very commonly used by biologists anymore, since it has such loaded implications.

[Academia Nut]

Academia Nut, you misunderstood Legault's point entirely- the argument is that ultimately morality is simply a code designed for a particular goal- a secularist may develop their code based on their own conclusions, or those of John Stuart Mill, but it is still a code designed for a particular goal.

No I didn't, I was pointing out a flaw in Legault's thinking. The fact that he referred to any sort of secular philosopher as a source of morality indicates that he is still viewing the concept in terms of a religious viewpoint, of morality being a whole-cloth creation by a specific party. Not only that, but his placement of code before goal is also telling, in that the causality of the two are in direct opposition.

A religious code is handed down by God (or the gods/whatever) and obedience to the code is towards the goal of receiving some form of reward and/or avoiding punishment. Within the context of religion, that is the only function of a code of morality. There can be no appeal towards pro-social behaviour because that is outside the domain of what religious based morality considers. That religious morality often (but not always) promotes pro-social behaviour, or at least certain forms of it, is telling to secular individuals, but if a religious code demands the slaughter of the innocent then a peaceful saint would in fact be considered immoral under that code.

Secular morality on the other hand starts with a set of assumptions about the world and takes those assumptions to construct a goal framework that can then be used to derive a code of behaviour that will result in those goals taking place.

So religious morality starts with the code that if followed will lead to certain goals, while secular morality starts with a set of goals to construct a code around. Both are ultimately arbitrary, it is just that in religious morality the arbitrariness comes from the god(s) while in secular morality the arbitrariness comes from the selection of the goals in the first place. For the religious, the arbitrariness of the god(s) is immaterial because they are the god(s) and so whatever is said there must go, while for the secular since the existence of divine beings is not taken as a given the arbitrariness of choosing a goal system is preferable to the arbitrariness of a non-existent figure, especially since with the various religions, sects, and denominations the choice of deity is also essentially arbitrary.

[Old Peculier]

There is no reason I can think of why this schema couldn't apply equally to a man stranded on a deserted island. Even without other people to interact with, a man must continue to make choices and value judgments about himself and his surroundings, such as "Is it okay to kill other life to sustain my own survival?" Formulating this formally: an isolated man strives to act in a specific way (code) in order to live a life he or she finds optimal or acceptable (goal).

Optimal for what? Individual survival? That's the same morality that a bear has. Unless you're saying that every living thing on Earth has a morality code, this makes no sense.

I can't see that you addressed the point that the island individual might chose to live life in a certain way because this is what they find acceptable. I interpreted this point as meaning, for example, that the islander might attempt to live a vegetarian lifestyle due to the ethical choice to not kill if it can be avoided. This choice has no social value, but is nevertheless based on rational utilitarianism ie. minimising suffering, so therefore is an example of 'individual morality'.

A flaw in this argument is that by recognising the moral value of other animals the islander is treating them in a social manner, and so is not basing her behaviour on 'individual morality'.

[Ziggy Stardust]

If a bear can understand the concept of right and wrong, they'd have morality too, regardless of how you define "right". Whether it is "god god god", "me me me", or "us us us", or anything else, we can define it, reason about it, and ultimately, make a choice.

Morality is relative. You are anthropomorphizing the bear, trying to attach to it our own ethical considerations. Our own moral systems are simply a product of our social structures and they way they have evolved. Any system of morality that would be applicable to a bear would be different from our own, and part of that is a function of intelligence, and part of it is a function of socialness. You can't say the bear is amoral because it doesn't understand our own conception of morality.

Of course there's people who act like that, but when they get it wrong, we can say "you should have known better".

Way to completely evade Darth Wong's point. Again, what makes you think humans make conscious choices and value judgments instead of relying mostly on instinct? You are taking it for granted that humans rely on anything more than "instinct," as opposed to actually trying to come up with a reason that this is so.

You can't really say that about a wild animal.

Why not? What differentiates the behavior of a wild animal with respect to that species norm from the behavior of a human with respect to our species norm?

[Bakustra]

If people do not make conscious choices, then morality is irrelevant- the ability to choose between actions consciously is crucial to every definition of free will. Thus, your entire argument is self-defeating- if humans don't make conscious decisions, then morality is irrelevant, (indeed, everything is irrelevant, because there is nothing to assign relevance to things or to observe that relevance, even if we presume inherent relevance! In order to defeat nihilism, you annihilate everything. Curious, but I doubt you carried it that far.) and so arguing about morality is irrelevant.

It's interesting how "western value theory" became "moral philosophy" in your rebuttal. Since when are western moral philosophies the only moral philosophies? I never said that all moral philosophies are bunk; I specifically criticized traditional western individualistic moral philosophy.

As for "throwing out its entire tradition", you're full of shit. The appeal to tradition is a fallacy; rather than asking why I dismiss it, perhaps you should ask why you're expecting me to respect it. If you want to justify something, you'd better come up with something better than the fact that it's traditional.

As I said, and you ignored, Legault's argument could just as easily be applied to a bear.

You didn't bother reading my post, since I pointed out that individualism is hardly unique to moral philosophy in the West. And would you hold Einsteinian or Newtonian mechanics to this same standard? Should I demand that you reconstruct the entire justifications for physics every time you implicitly use them in an argument? Is that reasonable? If you answer yes, prepare to justify every implicit assumption in your posts from now on until the end of time.

Finally, I'm not sure what that sort of criticism is meant to address. That if we remove human consciousness as a distinguishing feature, we get nonsense results? I agree, but you seem to think that human consciousness is a falsehood. I'm confused as to whether you're actually saying much of anything.

But as for what you're saying, it's downright disturbing for someone who's a racial minority to be saying that the group overrides the individual period, and that it is immoral to go against the will of the group, then anti-racism, feminism, and gay rights are all immoral movements, and it was wrong for people to challenge the will of the majority. Indeed, for all your bleating about how tradition isn't enough, your moral philosophy as you have expressed it enshrines tradition to the only center of morality- things are moral because they are what society believes. I think that you haven't thought at all about what your position means, let alone how to reconcile it with your sneering misanthropic classism you display regularly.

Academia Nut, you misunderstood Legault's point entirely- the argument is that ultimately morality is simply a code designed for a particular goal- a secularist may develop their code based on their own conclusions, or those of John Stuart Mill, but it is still a code designed for a particular goal.

No I didn't, I was pointing out a flaw in Legault's thinking. The fact that he referred to any sort of secular philosopher as a source of morality indicates that he is still viewing the concept in terms of a religious viewpoint, of morality being a whole-cloth creation by a specific party. Not only that, but his placement of code before goal is also telling, in that the causality of the two are in direct opposition.

A religious code is handed down by God (or the gods/whatever) and obedience to the code is towards the goal of receiving some form of reward and/or avoiding punishment. Within the context of religion, that is the only function of a code of morality. There can be no appeal towards pro-social behaviour because that is outside the domain of what religious based morality considers. That religious morality often (but not always) promotes pro-social behaviour, or at least certain forms of it, is telling to secular individuals, but if a religious code demands the slaughter of the innocent then a peaceful saint would in fact be considered immoral under that code.

Secular morality on the other hand starts with a set of assumptions about the world and takes those assumptions to construct a goal framework that can then be used to derive a code of behaviour that will result in those goals taking place.

So religious morality starts with the code that if followed will lead to certain goals, while secular morality starts with a set of goals to construct a code around. Both are ultimately arbitrary, it is just that in religious morality the arbitrariness comes from the god(s) while in secular morality the arbitrariness comes from the selection of the goals in the first place. For the religious, the arbitrariness of the god(s) is immaterial because they are the god(s) and so whatever is said there must go, while for the secular since the existence of divine beings is not taken as a given the arbitrariness of choosing a goal system is preferable to the arbitrariness of a non-existent figure, especially since with the various religions, sects, and denominations the choice of deity is also essentially arbitrary.

All these words in order to attack something entirely non-essential to the argument, and fail to disagree with the actual argument at all. Frankly, I was tempted to replace your quoted post with fart onomatopoiea, because that's what it is- flatulence.

[Darth Wong]

If people do not make conscious choices, then morality is irrelevant- the ability to choose between actions consciously is crucial to every definition of free will. Thus, your entire argument is self-defeating- if humans don't make conscious decisions, then morality is irrelevant, (indeed, everything is irrelevant, because there is nothing to assign relevance to things or to observe that relevance, even if we presume inherent relevance! In order to defeat nihilism, you annihilate everything. Curious, but I doubt you carried it that far.) and so arguing about morality is irrelevant.

That's a brilliant argument. Unless, of course, there are shades between "totally conscious, independent of instinct" and "totally instinct, with no consciousness". And there is no reason to believe that bears lack consciousness. They just lack higher-order philosophy, much of which is actually post-hoc bullshit and you know it.

You didn't bother reading my post, since I pointed out that individualism is hardly unique to moral philosophy in the West.

Who the fuck said that individualism itself is unique to the west? Stop putting words in my mouth, asshole. The point was that a morality based on an individualistic one-on-one relationship between you and a deity is a Christian invention, hence western.

And would you hold Einsteinian or Newtonian mechanics to this same standard? Should I demand that you reconstruct the entire justifications for physics every time you implicitly use them in an argument? Is that reasonable? If you answer yes, prepare to justify every implicit assumption in your posts from now on until the end of time.

If you think that Einsteinian or Newtonian mechanics are justified by "tradition" rather than empirical data, you are a goddamned idiot. To even make this comparison is already a glorious form of idiocy.

But as for what you're saying, it's downright disturbing for someone who's a racial minority to be saying that the group overrides the individual period, and that it is immoral to go against the will of the group, then anti-racism, feminism, and gay rights are all immoral movements, and it was wrong for people to challenge the will of the majority.

Yes, I see that you are indeed a goddamned idiot. You are confusing the opinion of the majority with the benefit of the majority. All social morality is based on the prosperity and survival of the group. The fact that groups can often adopt policies which actually work against that goal does not change that fact; it only gives us examples of where morality codes have gone wrong in the past.

Indeed, for all your bleating about how tradition isn't enough, your moral philosophy as you have expressed it enshrines tradition to the only center of morality- things are moral because they are what society believes. I think that you haven't thought at all about what your position means, let alone how to reconcile it with your sneering misanthropic classism you display regularly.

Again, you have shown an inability to understand that a social morality code is for the benefit of the group. This does not mean that the majority opinion is always right. You are injecting democracy into my argument.