Non-religious Morality
Posted by DrZarkov99 5 years, 9 months ago to Philosophy
Many in the gulch are non-religious, so I thought this concept would instigate some interesting discussion. Humans are social animals, which is the study's premise.
Of course morality is universal: it is philosophical.
But its purpose is to sustain/enhance individual lives, not the collective good.
With that so well-demonstrated by Rand, it is absurd to even hypothesize that morality is “fundamentally driven to promote cooperative behavior” – for the collective/common good. This is pure altruism- self-sacrifice.
The list of 7 rules is unreasonably mixed; e.g. property rights are essential and a fundamental individual right (despite the nonsense spewed by the likes of Pigliucci), but fairness is an irrational standard. The result of living rationally for oneself is living rationally/cooperatively with others. But the latter should never be one’s moral purpose.
The entire collective subjectivist premise of collectivism collectively observed is contrary to a rational basis of ethics. Their "research" is acknowledge to be based on a "long-hypothesized idea arguing human morality is fundamentally driven to promote cooperative behavior. This suggests the moral valence of any action is determined by its social outcomes. So a morally 'good' action can be defined as one that benefits cooperative behaviors that serve the collective."
Calling this "non religious morality" appealing to the "non religious" misses the whole point. "Non-religious" says what one does not believe, not why or what one does accept as true. The negative "non religion" cannot be a basis for morality. These collectivist sociologists/anthropologists have nothing in common with us.
Only collectivist believers have a notion of what is "too much" property. Whenever those who express a desire for "equality" of wealth gain control, the result is equal poverty for all but the elite at the top.
When I posted this item, it wasn't an endorsement, but an anthropologist view that I was sure would raise hackles and stir an exchange of ideas. Lots of erudite expressions resulted. My thanks to all, and doubleplusgood for you as some of the best defense of real objectivism.
Jefferson and the founding fathers understood and accepted private property rights as a principle and natural right; it was generally accepted and emphasized in several state constitutions, such as Virginia's. But it was not in any known draft of the Declaration. There was no such reference to remove over slavery or anything else.
All known drafts of the Declaration referred to a right to "life", "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness". "Property" should have been included, but it was taken for granted; today's problems were not foreseen then.
Congress did remove Jefferson's protest of the King as responsible for the slave trade as one of the reasons for the break from Britain.
See Carl Becker's, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, which discusses all the known draft's of the Declaration and much more -- from the philosophy presumed by it, to the contrasting philosophy that followed, and from the political process of adopting it to its literary style.
I think that most of the crowd here lost sight of Ayn Rand's objectivist view and allow the infection of collectivist ideology to creep into their thinking. I cannot believe my eyes seeing someone voting your comment down. Where is their explanation for that action?
Just my thought.
Maritimus
One of their ideological mantras is that evil, such as communism, is "based on atheism" -- the same fallacy I addressed above. The collectivism in their epistemology package-deals people into invalid concepts based on non-essentials, specifically not being their religious faith, without regard to what we do believe as true or how we know it.
It used to be that those attracted to the sense of life and philosophy of Atlas Shrugged were filled with enthusiastic questions wanting to know more. Now we see militant dogmatists who don't care about Ayn Rand's ideas. They either confuse Atlas Shrugged with the contradictions of whatever they already believed, or don't care and only want to exploit its popularity as a source of converts for their own dogma (or as their echo chamber), or both.
Obviously they don't belong here.
It seems to me that one of the problems comes from the need to have very thoroughly thought through whether one's premises have a solid rational root or base, without an emotional devotion having crept in surreptitiously.
That need seems to be going more frequently unsatisfied. Here and in much of so called mainstream media, which certainly are not mainstream in the true sense of the word and smell a lot of propaganda machines.
I spent 21 of my younger years in fascist and communist "socialisms" and thus feel thoroughly inoculated.
Stay well. We will never give up.
Respectfully,
Maritimus
“In an age where the world is plummeting towards a giant division between those in poverty and multibillionaires, Pigliucci asks whether it is morally good to respect the rights of those who hoard massive volumes of resources.
"But surely we should respect other people's property," Pigliucci writes. "Well, it depends. If it is acquired unethically, even if legally, no, I don't think there is any such moral requirement. If your wealth is both disproportionate and arrived at by exploiting others (and let's be frank, if it is the former, it can hardly not be the latter), then it is just and fair to pass laws to relieve you of much of that burden, through proportional taxation, for instance.”
I was going to mention that but you beat me by 20hours!
I doubt that statistics bear out that statement. The implied criticism does not consider:
1) the new mega fortunes are largely the result of creativity and effort (and luck) producing goods and services that are purchased by people, voluntarily, people who think the purchase benefits them. The purchasers are often the poorest.
2) Whether the statement is true or not, the poor are much richer than they were, and the poorest are numerically in decline as they rise economically.
3) There is evidence that the efforts of those new mega-onaires helps lift the poor economically.
So, that New Atlas article has low cred.
As for reciprocal altruism, I suggest that ideology prevents the authors from using a better term, trade.
Today the poor have cell phones, dishwashers, clothes dryers, big televisions, and access to many "social justice" services that provide so much more to them than our middle class could have imagined. Class envy is just one more weapon used to tear our society apart.
I have liberal relatives who are well off, but seething with anger over the lot of conservative billionaires. They fall all over themselves to support wealthy liberals, because they claim to support "the people." When I bring up statistics and point to the fact that the conservatives do more to support charities and help the poor, they attribute that as an attempt to improve their otherwise "evil" image. I sadly have to conclude that as is often said, liberalism is a mental illness.
Their "research" is acknowledge to be based on a "long-hypothesized idea arguing human morality is fundamentally driven to promote cooperative behavior. This suggests the moral valence of any action is determined by its social outcomes. So a morally 'good' action can be defined as one that benefits cooperative behaviors that serve the collective."
Ayn Rand said that a social environment was better for man than living alone--"but only on certain conditions."
And she reiterated that man had to right to his own life and his own property.
It is not for others to get together and gang up on a man because they disapprove of the way he got his property (provided he got it honestly and without violating anybody else's rights. Just another way of trying to sneak in the altruist morality and strangling free enterprise.
I can't even.
When there is a difference between what humans have or control (own) it exists because not only of the differences in what humans are capable of but more importantly what they choose. The inequalities never go away even when the collectivists are in charge, they are rearranged by the use of violence when the collectivists rule and the order is rearranged morally when people can choose to be objectivists. Objectivists do not rule, they simply choose for themselves what they desire and let others do the same. Interesting how the altruist philosophy of morality was slipped in using the word reciprocity. While on the face of the word it means that if I give you something I get something in return which sounds like free market capitalism paying close attention to the follow up argument one realizes that what is meant in this case is if I am given something I have to give it back to keep it in the loop because I cannot come into possession of any property at any time which leads to the question of who would do anything if at any moment the crowd could demand everything you have to be 'returned' to them.
“Another example comes with the moral rule of social reciprocation. This moral foundation underpins the idea of reciprocal altruism, or simply put, treating others how you would like to be treated.”
I always thought that this idea had a slight collectivist bent. We are all individuals. The way others want to be treated is not necessarily the way you would want to be treated, and vice versa. A better, but more difficult moral rule, would be to treat others the way they want to be treated.
Imagine over 50% of the country thinking they are entitled to other peoples wealth while they sit back and relax, and applying their wants to golden rule collectively.
That one is incredibly dangerous because it puts your actions subservient to another's (often unknown) desires. This is at the heart of the current gender confusion laws that are now criminalizing (even absent intent) calling someone by anything other than their desired "gender".
So you really can't have something so open ended...got to be a hard and fast reasonable rule.
Unlike the demoncrapic mobs, you have to have an agreement on how we interact with each other and within civilizations such that it is civilized.
...and yea...we need a proper definition of what it is to be civilized too.
1) I will have nothing to apologize for if I treat people the way I want to be treated. If I treat a person like crap because he/she deserves it, then that is beneath my dignity. I would rather, as Roark says, "not think of" them.
2) Sometimes people want to be treated so much better than anyone has a right to be treated that it would require sacrifice on my part. See CBJ's comment regarding "I want to be subsidized so I don't have to work".
": Careful, in this day and age you'll be considered a Racist or a Sexist or a [their choice]-ist, if you don't actively support their agenda. They'll have your job!
I am only through chapter 1, but I suspect that IQ May have some effect on the ability of a person to use reason effectively. In a democracy run by mob rule as we have today, this could tilt the country towards the emotional left even though ayn rand laid out the principles of objectivism carefully
Tests in most other cultures show average IQ rates lower than that in America ( except for some far eastern cultures). Raises some interesting questions for sure about the likelihood of spreading a complex group of philosophical principles in the world.
Most people don't live up to their intellectual capacity.
(The mean is the average, calculated in the usual way, not "half above and half below", which is the median.)
If someone from Somali barely speaks English he won't understand either the test questions or the principles in Galt's speech. A person of average intelligence ought to be able to understand both with sufficient explanation.
Us military doesn’t accept people below 83. I think there are supposedly 10 million people in USA below that cutoff. Already.
Accepting random migrants from South America would reduce the average IQ in America and make us less competitive in the world. That is why immigration should be merit based.
As technology advances, I think People need to be smarter and more educated in order to compete in our economy. More and more low level jobs are being taken over by automation and robots
Regarding what people think, the only relevant criterion is appreciation of self-responsibility for thinking and living, and respecting the rights of the individual. That is made much more complex by the state of those factors already in this country, making adopting it as policy impossible. Welfare statists want more "clients".
Now our system favors the weak, the less intelligent, and the ones looking to be taken care of. America does NOT need those people, and needs to stop admitting people because we feel sorry for them.
If a migrant showed up at your door, what would you require if they wanted to move in with you? Our immigration policy should be crafted more along the same lines
The stuff about the "greater good" may apply to societies where the main means of production is land and whoever owns it can effectively enslave the serfs.
Consider the common concept of revenge, which is common across many cultures. Before criminal justice systems, it was a deterrent for crime. A person committing a crime knew that the victims or their families might come after them for revenge, even if it was illogical in that the revenge wouldn't undo the wrong, e.g. bring back a murder victim or recover the stolen property. There's a good reason for revenge to be so common, yet it's not the way to deal with crime in a society with a criminal justice system.
I also wonder if there might have been some selective advantage for sexual assault. The religions of the world seem to tolerate abhorrent ancient practices of enslaving and abusing non-combatants in war. It was apparently a fact of life then, although beyond the pale in modern morality. Might this horrible behavior have been selected for when it passed down the perpetrators' genes? I do not know. I'm not sure if this happened.
But I'm sure not all behaviors that are part of our basic proclivities are a good idea. Not all notions of morality that crop up frequently in human societies are sound.
The collectivist "greater good" should not apply anywhere. The right of private property right is the opposite of feudalism and does not "enslave serfs", which is imposed by statist, feudalist government.
Why, exactly, do we need a NEW set of morals? I'm not seeing it.
Another thing I can't quite grasp is how you feel that "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not steal" are "religious" portions. Why do people get so uptight about religion? I've been married to a Christian for over 40 years and we've never fought over our beliefs. To date, nobody has tried to lock me up, cut off my head or burn me at the stake, for my lack of faith.
Am I missing something?
A good example is the drivers in Las Vegas. They drive like maniacs, cutting people off all the time. But if you cut them off, they get belligerent.
I some people agree to at least some o the principles mentioned in objectivism, is that not better than if they adopted 100% leftist ideas?
Pragmatism is and has been for over a century a major means for the dissemination of destructive policies and destructive underlying philosophical ideas on which it is parasitical -- including, but not restricted to, the entire trend of progressivism.
That you would "surely like people doing to others as you would want them to do to you" is a subjectivist standard based on what you "want", with no basis for it and no way to implement it. To the extent that what you personally "want" is correct, your "wants" will not change what others think and do. That, too, is subjectivist.
You can try to take practical measures to personally protect yourself during your lifetime. Adopting Pragmatism because there "isn't time" for anything else does not "work" and would make your own life worse. Changing the course of politics requires changing the fundamental philosophical ideas that are broadly accepted, however long that takes. There are no shortcuts.
This is true. I dont harbor expectations of changing politics in the USA, at least while anyone I know is alive, and you shouldnt either. Ayn Rand spent her life hoping that could happen, but she overlooked the basic reason the currently living leftists are leftists- they DONT think and cant be convinced through reason- Unfortunately for all of us.