slug.com slug.com
5 1

Can morality be objective.

I put philosophy in the same category of intellectual pursuits as sociology and psychology. To the extent that they are often weak in terms of empirical "proof". Not entirely useless but always suspect.

One thing I have noticed is that scientific papers written by a team that includes a philosopher tend to be more coherent. Certainly rigorous logic is important and philosophy contributes to that. The question is if philosophical logic a basis for a morality. In general I would say no. Logic systems including those applied to empirical systems such as science are by definition closed systems. One of there primary tools is reduction or in scientific term controlled environments. Societies however are irreducible by definition because they are complex, chaotic, organic, and interdependent.

The reason I'm posting this in the culture war thread is that the various sides have each their own philosophy and morality. Each claims empirical evidence to support the logic of their morality. Each however reduces society to what they feel are it's essential elements. This reduction of the irreducible leads to distortions of the empirical evidence.

If we examine just one philosophy to illustrate my point bare in mind it is not a critique but an illustration of complexity.

I want to start with the moral philosophy of Christianity. Partly because of it's similarity with the left's philosophy of equality and disdain for wealth accumulation.

What strikes me about Christian philosophy is that it falls apart removed from it's theological origins as an eschatological Jewish cult. If the world is going to end tomorrow and salvation is in the next life then worldly concerns are illogical. Theologians tend to come up with many allegorical explanations of how this is a misinterpretation but I reject that as just another system of logic unsupported by empirical evidence. The evidence suggests that at least amongst the poor believers the attitude of "manyana" and social malaise is reasonably prevalent. The same pattern plagues socialist experiments where equality often means equally poor accept of course for the priestly class who maintain the vision of utopia.

I will deal with the nature of morality in my next post.

wolfhnd 8 July 29
Share
You must be a member of this group before commenting. Join Group

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account

5 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

The nature of morality is necessarily both natural and unnatural. Where natural are those instincts that could be called a general conformity with wild justice. Where unnatural are those "instincts" that are culturally evolved. Natural morality focuses on fairness and empathy. Those predispositions that enhance networking and social status. Unnatural morality focuses on functionality in groups too large to be intimately networked. Natural morality is the product of bottom up natural selection. Unnatural morality is more the product of top down design. The former less hierarchical and inflexible than the later. One must accommodate the other or people will be rebellious and neurotic or simple produce a dysfunctional society. Fairness, empathy, and conscientiousness must be merged in such a way that a meritocracy can be maintained.

wolfhnd Level 8 July 29, 2020
0

You’ve made a patently ridiculous assumption by conflating Christianity with “the left”.

Morality is the result of an agreement between people deciding that a particular set of behaviours be codified/adopted irrespective of and usually regardless of the interests or benefits to the larger community. Consider the imposition of communism onto any population unfortunate enough to be victimized by it. Certainly the murders of a hundred million people stands as proof of that - moral only to those with the guns.

Christianity at least has something a bit more tangible to refer to than “the left’s” might is right

I'm not conflating the two other than to make an allegorical point about the natural desire for fair or equitable outcomes in a world where that is impossible. Christianity addresses it through salvation and the left through the inevitable fall of capitalism and the coming utopia.

@wolfhnd nope.

One does it by holding out the promise of a reward for loving God and your ‘brother’ - a choice, the second by force.

0

Okay, about the notion of Christian philosophy...I've actually been thinking a lot about that very thing lately. What I've been pondering is whether, if one took fully from all nearly contemporaneous sources, and recreated a "historical" account of Jesus' deeds, compiled all of his reportedly original teachings, could it all be systematized into a philosophical presentation of the nature of the human condition as within a cultural framework. It isn't a project I've really seen attempted.

govols Level 8 July 29, 2020

Yes I was sure you had been 🙂

In some ways I like to reduce Christian philosophy to something very akin to Buddhism. A rejection of the instinctual life which can be read as devotion to, climbing the dominance hierarchy, accumulation of wealth, physical pleasure, or earthly concerns. Theologically they are of course nothing alike.

At the individual level they both may offer useful instruction but in terms of organizing a social structure I'm not so sure.

@wolfhnd

I'm only passingly familiar with Buddhism, but I do sort of get the comparison, maybe. Both understand that existing in the human environment is a horrifying reality, and both provide tools for avoiding the inward identity of cog in the cultural machine.

Organizing social structure? Yeah, I'm clueless...

2

Can morality be objective? Good question. (I have an answer, of the "yes and no" type. Can´t post it here, because it´s book-chapter-length and seriously complicated.)

Humanities and Social Sciences tend to be way too subjective; I agree.

Philosophers can contribute to coherence; agree again. Being non-contradictory is necessary for real science, though not sufficient.

Empirical evidence can have only a limited place in morality, because Hume´s Law is an absolute: You cannot get from an Is to an Ought, period. It´s called the Naturalistic Fallacy. Even Naturalists, or especially Naturalists, should avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy.

Christian morality is not exactly about equality, but about altruism which is not quite the same thing. Accumulating wealth is good, if you then freely share with the needy. More paternalism than communism so to speak. (Socialism is somewhere middle-between and such a vague term that I try to avoid it.)

You can be a religious unbeliever and still sympathize with Christian moral beliefs. Case in point: Schopenhauer.

Nice reply.

When I say Christian ethos of equality I'm referring to "it's more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (or night gate). It doesn't propose earthly but spiritual equality which seem in the light of it's eschatological narrative what does the earthly matter anyway? As I said there is a strain of the same attitude in the leftist. Their morality simply replaced heaven with the socialist paradise and the end times with Marx's certainty that capitalism was doomed.

@wolfhnd 1. Spiritual equality only under the condition of being saved, which is a religious/moral condition. Marxism has nothing of the kind.
2. To be fair to Marx, his opinion that Capitalism is doomed did not rest on faith, but on a strictly economic analysis (maybe a wrong one, but still). Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, rests on no foundation at all; it is purely a swindle. Cultural Marxists were not so much fanatics as crooks.

@UlrichArbes

Spiritual equality in that salvation is open to anyone. Mind you I'm not talking about the later manifestations such as Catholicism or Protestantism. The story of the thief on the cross next to Jesus illustrating that the price of admission was simple, straightforward and requires minimal effort and no prior status. Similarly the price of admission into the left is a profession of faith in the ideology not demonstrative outcomes of actual behavior.

I wasn't conflating Marxism with leftism beyond the belief that capitalism is flawed and unable to meet the left's moral objectives.

@wolfhnd The attitude of the thief on the cross was actually quite spectacular under the circumstances and could be considered proof of a true and genuine change of heart. Joining the Left is not comparable, since it is proof of stupidity, moral shallowness and/or conformism.

I´d say the Left in its present state is even worse than you believe. They do not care about the perceived injustices of Capitalism as an economic system any more -Bernie is atypical!-, they are only interested in identity politics for freaks and the dregs of society (whom Marx/Engels called the "Lumpenproletariat", so old-fashioned Marxism would be a cut above that).

@UlrichArbes

Not much to argue with there although by position is that you can see in Marx's personal life his true motivations. You have to see how an ideology manifests itself in the real world to know it.
Like the current social justice cult Marx gets around to hating everyone. And like the current misfits it isn't the injustices of capitalism that motivated Marx but the emotional appeal of what Rousseau would have called noble savagery. To be free of the smothering restraints of bourgeoisie proprieties. The worst are like mass shooters and hate existence itself but the average member of the social justice cult, like the adolescent cults of the sixties, are rebeling against civilization itself. Multiculturalism and tribalism is just one expression of that.

@wolfhnd I believe that, as far as historical consequences go, Marx caused more damage than possibly any other person in history. That said, I am inclined to think his excuses are somewhat better than those of postmodern Leftists. Your comment on their psychology is excellent.

  1. I think there is any number of extremely one-sided geniuses whose personal life was unimpressive and the less said about it, the better. I wouldn´t really condemn Marx on this count.

  2. Compared to our SJWs, Marx was way more coherent, and as to Rousseau, he disagreed with him in the decisive respect: Marx was 100% in favour of technological progress, Rousseau nearly 100% against.

  3. As to the SJWs, I am in perfect agreement with your statement that they hate existence at worst and civilization at best. I happen to have coined a name for that attitude: 🙂 I call them Acosmics. Their favouring all kind of misfits is the most obvious symptom; Acosmism is their psychical disease. There is also a third, functional aspect to it, which helps explain their successes, which is Bioleninism, a term coined by the Historian Spandrell. The idea of Bioleninism is that if you build your political strategy around cripples and outcasts, you will have extremely loyal followers, because they have no one else to turn to and can especially not rely on their own resources.

Edit: Weird. Engine seemingly ate the first 2 digits under 2.). 100% became 0. 😀

@UlrichArbes

Thanks for the thoughtful comments.

I will try to develop my theory on what I see as a direct line of temperament from Rousseau, to the French Revolution, to Marx that is more convincing. In psychology terms I would tentatively say it is a lack of consciousness. I'm not sure that it really captures the ideal well however.

1

It occurs to me that morality could maybe be objective among a people who agree on the objective.

govols Level 8 July 29, 2020

This would only be intersubjectivity: Not good enough.

Objectivity demands a specific viewpoint; namely a viewpoint that is completely impartial, not to say disinterested.

One of the "purposes" of multiculturalism is to prevent that shared objective. It ties in with the rejection of grand narratives by post modernists. It's only a contradictory argument if you understand that a naturalistic, subjective, conceptualization of morality is dependent on the tabula rasa view of human nature. The universal nature of emotional states is a strong argument against that position.

The social constructist or what radicals call social Darwinism, or cultural determinism and reject is oddly at odds with the insistence on group identities. They at once embrace and reject sexual and ethnic identity. It is what happens when a cult goes wild and escapes it's philosophical foundations. What the post modernists and Marxists were rejecting was the Western concept of universal natural law. From that we get cultural, ethnic, and sexual identity as being subjective, built on a tabula rasa view of human nature which implies but doesn't specifically address social construction as the source of identity. That creates the question of where, or how the subjective cultural identity arose. If the process isn't social Darwinism and there is no "objective" human nature the answer that they offer is it's about power dynamics. It's a rabbit hole because you then have to ask where did power dynamics come from if there is no definable "human nature".

What I think they are really proposing is the noble savage view. For the Marxist that means that the workers are closer to the natural state of perfection than management. For the post modernist it is an excuse to ignore traditional morality. I'm both cases it's an appeal to the emotive and the concept of emotional intelligence. Ironically it isn't that far off of the the rights view of an invisible hand, natural law, and economic Darwinism. Political ideologies it turns out are deeply rooted in emotional appeal. The slight variation in genetic personality dispositions accounting for which side of the divide people fall. That's not to say social indoctrination doesn't play a role but it is confusing and messy. At the extreme ends, say the religious right and the functional leftist you find people who are think strategists meaning that away from the middle personality traits behaviorally converge. There remains however significant differences in how group selection functions. You will have strong group selection of as you suggest morality is a shared ethnocentrism in a religious society and much less group selection if morality as the left seems it as the brotherhood of man and little or no ethnocentrism. This illustrates the conflict between conscientious personalities and open personalities. They both however see human nature through rose colored glasses.

My position is that civilization is necessarily very "unnatural" and incompatible with our evolved instincts. Group selection causes civilization to be eusocial. Primarily at least in the beginning driven by the production and defense of resources. The "noble savage" will in that environment be selected against. The problem of course is that emotionally or instinctually we are all "savages" and not particularly noble .

Write Comment

Recent Visitors 21

Photos 11,776 More

Posted by JohnHoukVideo Collection of Tyranny Past, Present & Future SUMMARY: This is a collection of seven videos that are in a random date order showing my interest… Tyranny is the theme.

Posted by GeeMacMexico admits it is a hotbed of drug trafficking, but not of drug use, according to its top politician.

Posted by JohnHoukReprising ShadowGate Documentaries: With Dr.

Posted by JohnHoukLest YOU Are Brainwashed to be Happy in an Age of Transformation Tyranny: Videos & Commentary to Refresh YOUR Memory to at Least Awaken Personal Resistance! SUMMARY: An examination of saved videos...

Posted by Weltansichtwell....doggies

Posted by MosheBenIssacMetoo in action

Posted by JohnHoukDr.

Posted by JohnHoukConnecting the Dots! Some AI Truth – What Used to be “Playing God” is Really “Playing Devil” SUMMARY: … Satan – the foe – has only one delusional recourse: Brainwash human souls ...

Posted by JohnHoukMy Intro to Documentary, ‘Let My People Go’ SUMMARY: Dr.

Posted by JohnHoukMedical Tyranny – A Look at mRNA Danger & COVID Bioweapon Exploitation SUMMARY: Medical Tyranny has become a fact of life that the brainwashing Dem-Marxists, RINOs and Mockingbird MSM work hard ...

Posted by JohnHoukDr.

Posted by JohnHoukIrritated With Transformation Yet?

Posted by JohnHoukVOTE TRUMP – Overcome Dem-Marxist/RINO Lies – Video Share SUMMARY: The first batch of shared videos reflects VOTE-FOR-TRUMP in the midst of Dem-Marxist/RINO government LIES.

Posted by JohnHoukA Look at Mike Benz, THEN Tucker Ep.

Posted by JohnHoukLooking at ‘The Great Setup with Dr.

Posted by JohnHoukEnlightening Videos of a Corrupted Society SUMMARY: … The thing is, TYRANNY today has become very multifaceted in how the socio-political infection of CONTROL has crept into the one-time Land of ...

  • Top tags#video #youtube #world #government #media #biden #democrats #USA #truth #children #Police #society #god #money #reason #Canada #rights #freedom #culture #China #hope #racist #death #vote #politics #communist #evil #socialist #Socialism #TheTruth #justice #kids #democrat #evidence #crime #conservative #hell #laws #nation #liberal #federal #community #military #racism #climate #violence #book #politicians #joebiden #fear ...

    Members 9,397Top

    Moderators