I don't believe in ethics or morality.

[Stevil]

I don't believe in ethics or morality.

But it seems many people, even Atheists, think they are ethical and think they know what the ethical thing is to do and hence would like to frame up law based on their own understanding of ethics.

I can't express enough how dangerous and oppressive I feel this route is.

But I do like to listen to other people, especially other atheists, and hear how they justify law.


EDIT: Split from another thread - Tank

[Amicale]

I don't believe in ethics or morality.

But it seems many people, even Atheists, think they are ethical and think they know what the ethical thing is to do and hence would like to frame up law based on their own understanding of ethics.

I can't express enough how dangerous and oppressive I feel this route is.

But I do like to listen to other people, especially other atheists, and hear how they justify law.

Stevil, I've never met anyone who didn't believe in ethics or morality. I'm curious what you mean when you say that, especially in relation to this topic. Do you mean that you don't believe in a universal sense of ethics/morality that everyone ought to follow, or do you yourself never make choices that you consider to be moral or ethical, or... something else?

I would think that you, on a personal level, make choices daily that you'd consider ethical or moral -- helping someone simply to be kind, cheering up/comforting your wife if she's upset, etc. As it relates to this topic... if you and your wife were to find out she was pregnant, whether or not you chose to keep the baby would have something to do with your own sense of ethics and morality, I'd guess.

Am I wrong on all of this? If you're saying objective ethics/morality don't exist, OK, I understand your position. But if you're saying that personal, subjective ethics/morality don't exist either, I'm a bit lost.

I don't want to derail the thread, but I wanted to ask.

[Stevil]

There is no such thing as objective morality. Most Atheists would agree with this.

I don't think there is any such thing as subjective morality.

Morality is a human made concept.

Think of it like this.
1. If a male kills another male so that he can take his female partner for his own sexual endevours would this be immoral?
2. If a male kills a female's offspring so that she will become free for him to procreate with would this be immoral?
3. If a female kills her lover and eats him, would this be immoral?

As you have probably guessed by now, the above are examples of common behaviours of various non human animals. Why if other animals can take actions and simply be acting in a way that is natural to them, to their species then why do we not classify them as immoral where-as we would classify humans as being immoral?

Humans are animals too, we do what we do, because that is what we are.
As a society we need to make laws to protect ourselves and our society, we need to discourage certain behaviours and we need to remove certain dangerous individuals from our society. This is not because these behaviours are immoral or because these people are evil. It is because we need to protect ourselves and our society in order to survive.

You could say that morality is that which is Good and immorality is that which is Bad, but then you need to define in what context do we mean Good or Bad.
Morality is unnecessary for a functioning and stable society. We do not want a moral branch of the police force. We do not want moral law. Without objective morality then whose morals are you going to push onto society? Muslim morality? Christian morality? Your own morality?

As intelligent society we want a government to provide us with a stable and functioning society without unnecessarily infringing on our ability to make our own decisions in life. If the government imposes rules (law) we want these to be justified, we want to accept that it is best for us that the government makes these decisions and not us. These imposed rules must be towards a stable and functioning society e.g. laws against murder, rape, theft, assault etc. Imposing law on moral grounds rather than for a stable and functioning society only leads to oppression and conflict, e.g. laws against homosexual relationships, laws against divorce, laws against public displays of affection, laws against women's liberties, laws against sex outside of marriage etc.

On a personal note, when I make decisions it is with regards to my own survival, acting within the law keeps me out of prison, treating others how I would like to be treated keeps me out of conflict, treating friends and family with love and kindness provides me with important alliances and support. Behaving cordially within society helps to influence a social culture of cordiality.

[Stevil]

You may find this interesting

http://www.philosophynow.org/issues/80/An_Amoral_Manifesto_Part_I

In a word, this philosopher has long been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn't.

The above quote comes from a guy that I think is a professor of philosophy. Ironically he writes a column called "Moral Moments" for PhilosophyNow.org and has been doing so for over ten years, but he only came to the realisation that morality doesn't exist in 2010, if I read his column correctly.

[The Magic Pudding]

I don't think there is any such thing as subjective morality.

Morality is a human made concept.

I'm not really picking up on that, I have my concept of right and wrong, it's subjective, fuck I'm getting stuck in a this does not compute loop.

Think of it like this.
1. If a male kills another male so that he can take his female partner for his own sexual endevours would this be immoral?
2. If a male kills a female's offspring so that she will become free for him to procreate with would this be immoral?
3. If a female kills her lover and eats him, would this be immoral?

As you have probably guessed by now, the above are examples of common behaviours of various non human animals. Why if other animals can take actions and simply be acting in a way that is natural to them, to their species then why do we not classify them as immoral where-as we would classify humans as being immoral?

We don't judge them because we aren't in a position to, we don't know how they think.  I checked the definition of immoral, there's a doesn't follow moral principles one and  "Deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong"  Weather and earth quakes don't seem much different.

Humans are animals too, we do what we do, because that is what we are.
As a society we need to make laws to protect ourselves and our society, we need to discourage certain behaviours and we need to remove certain dangerous individuals from our society. This is not because these behaviours are immoral or because these people are evil. It is because we need to protect ourselves and our society in order to survive.



You could say that morality is that which is Good and immorality is that which is Bad, but then you need to define in what context do we mean Good or Bad.

Reasonable man is used often, reasonable person would be more reasonable in modern context.

Morality is unnecessary for a functioning and stable society. We do not want a moral branch of the police force. We do not want moral law. Without objective morality
then whose morals are you going to push onto society? Muslim morality? Christian morality? Your own morality?

I'm wondering where that's going to get you, will law have to be prescriptive, anticipate every harm to the common good?  I'm suspicious of reformers, they promise simplification, they point at tax law that requires a wheelbarrow to carry it around, when they're finished it takes two.

As intelligent society we want a government to provide us with a stable and functioning society without unnecessarily infringing on our ability to make our own decisions in life. If the government imposes rules (law) we want these to be justified, we want to accept that it is best for us that the government makes these decisions and not us. These imposed rules must be towards a stable and functioning society e.g. laws against murder, rape, theft, assault etc. Imposing law on moral grounds rather than for a stable and functioning society only leads to oppression and conflict, e.g. laws against homosexual relationships, laws against divorce, laws against public displays of affection, laws against women's liberties, laws against sex outside of marriage etc.

It's my impression that prior to WWII governments treated those wanting access in a,  utilitarian, racist or popularist way.  People were turned away and were gassed.  We had a white Australia policy for decades, it was supported by the left, workers would be disadvantaged by indiscriminate immigration, wages would fall.  Why didn't we scourge the land of indigenous people?  Why can't I get me a slave from a place of  famine if they sign the papers?

This new system of laws may get us to the stars quicker but the ticket may have costs you're not accounting for.

[Davin]

On a personal note, when I make decisions it is with regards to my own survival, acting within the law keeps me out of prison, treating others how I would like to be treated keeps me out of conflict, treating friends and family with love and kindness provides me with important alliances and support. Behaving cordially within society helps to influence a social culture of cordiality.

This just sounds like ethics and/or morality to me, why quibble over what you call this?

[Whitney]

On a personal note, when I make decisions it is with regards to my own survival, acting within the law keeps me out of prison, treating others how I would like to be treated keeps me out of conflict, treating friends and family with love and kindness provides me with important alliances and support. Behaving cordially within society helps to influence a social culture of cordiality.

This just sounds like ethics and/or morality to me, why quibble over what you call this?

Ya, that's what I'd call ethics/morality too.  You might want to look into 'ethical egoism'.

[penfold]

I apologise in advance this is a long post. I hope that it is, none the less, of interest.

I don't believe in ethics or morality.

[...]

But I do like to listen to other people, especially other atheists, and hear how they justify law.

This echos the position of most modern moral philosophy. Up until the C20th most ethical systems justified themselves either by reference to deities or through reference to human nature. So the Utilitarians argued that it is human nature to desire happiness, thus moral behaviour, in the broadest sense, was to maximize happiness. Similarly Kant's ethics derive from the central claim that humans are rational and ethics can be derived from rational method (what Kant referred to as categorical imperatives).

In 1903 the British philosopher G E Moore wrote a book called Principia Ethica in which he argued that all these various formulations were committing what he called the naturalistic fallacy. Essentially he argued that the ultimate question of "what is good?" will always be left open. So while a utilitarian might act in a manner to maximize happiness she could never justify the central claim that "maximizing happiness is what is good". G E Moore compared the word "good" to the word "yellow". "Yellow" he argued cannot be defined; we could not, for example, explain what "yellow" is to a person born blind; however we all know "yellow" when we see it. He argued the same was true of "good"; we cannot define it but we know it when we see it. This position was known as intuitionsim.

It did not take long for other philosophers (most noticeably C L Stevenson and A J Ayer) to observe that intuitionism was a pretty weak justification for ethics as people disagree as to their intuitions of "good". As Ayer put it in Language Truth and Logic: "Unless it is possible to provide some criterion by which one may decide between conflicting intuitions, a mere appeal to intuition is worthless as a test of a proposition's validity. But in the case of moral judgement no such criterion can be given" (Ch 6 p141). Ayer's claim was that moral statements were little more than subjective expressions of preference. Essentially saying "x is good" is equivalent to saying "hurrah for x" (Hare puts a gloss on this by pointing out that moral language is prescriptive in nature, so "x is good" means "I approve of x and so should you"). This position, known as emotivism, denies any objective morality has become the dominant position in modern moral philosophy.

My own view is that this is both bleak and ultimately wrong.

I think the central mistake dates back to the enlightenment. The scientific method was, at the time, becoming dominant; and there was a drive to try and find grounds for morality similar to those of science. It is this project that has ended in the moral apocalypse of emotivist thinking. The error, to my mind was to look at actions. Most modern moral thinking asks where certian actions are good or bad. However as the G E M Anscombe pointed out, this kind of 'rule-conception' ethics relied upon the existence of a 'rule-giver', which was God. As God become increasingly abolished in intellectual circles so the foundation for rule-conception ethics was lost. As Anscombe puts it: "The situation, if I am right, [is] the interesting one of the survival of a concept outside the framework of thought that made it a really intelligible one" (Modern Moral Philosophy - Philosophy 33 No 124 Jan 1958).

So given that, without God, we cannot justify a 'rule-conception' ethical system are there any other alternatives? The truly brilliant contemporary philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre (if anyone is interested in ethics, I could not recommend his book After Virtue strongly enough - it certainly shocked me out of my emostivist complacency) thinks that the system of virtue ethics found in Aristotle may provide a way forward. It is important to understand at the outset that Aristotle's system does not deal with questions of what is "good" or "bad" but rather how the pursuit of human happiness/flourishing (eudaimon) will allow for the foundation of a peaceful and productive society (the polis). Instead of looking at question of what makes an action "good" or "bad" Aristotle is trying to account for how through practice and "the right principle" (logos) we can flourish as human beings.

This post has gone on far too long already so I will not try and go too deep into this, a far more eloquent account than any I could give, is to be found in After Virtue. What I would say is this. While I think G E Moore was correct that words like "good" are undefinable, I don't think the same is true for virtues. I think we can all agree on definitions of ideas like "honesty", "justice" and "courage". While this is only the start of the story it perhaps already gives us a hint that Aristotle's method of ethics, abandoned during the enlightenment, have stronger foundations that the modern rule-conception view of ethics.

Interesting OP.

peace.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Saying there is no such thing as ethics or morality is like saying there is no such thing as government or political parties.  There may not be any universally applicable objective standard for what constitutes a good government or a good political party, but they exist.  They exist if for no other reason than that humans created them.  Humans also create ethics and morality, from a variety of sources - religion, cultural norms, response to crisis, reason, biological drives.  They exist, and I believe that they exist.  I am affected by both these concepts every day.  I have moral duties that have been inculcated upon me from youth and by society.  I have ethical duties imposed on me by my profession and by law. To say I don't believe in them or that they do not exist would simply be to deny reality. They are there, and for some of them, if I violate their principles, I could end up in jail, in divorce court, or disbarred, any of which would have devastating consequences for my life.  

[Tank]

Saying there is no such thing as ethics or morality is like saying there is no such thing as government or political parties. {snip}

I think you have come up with a false analogy there. ethics/morality have no physical reality, they are concepts concerned with human behaviour that may or may not influence behaviour. A government is an organisation with physical representations such as buildings filled with politicians. They have a physical existence in a way that a concept does not.

[The Magic Pudding]

Saying there is no such thing as ethics or morality is like saying there is no such thing as government or political parties. {snip}

I think you have come up with a false analogy there. ethics/morality have no physical reality, they are concepts concerned with human behaviour that may or may not influence behaviour. A government is an organisation with physical representations such as buildings filled with politicians. They have a physical existence in a way that a concept does not.

I'm not sure the snip was fair, maybe he started awkward but he kinda explained what he meant.
I'm not just saying this 'cause me and Ecurb are best pals, it's just, it's an odd thread.

[Stevil]

Saying there is no such thing as ethics or morality is like saying there is no such thing as government or political parties. {snip}

I think you have come up with a false analogy there. ethics/morality have no physical reality, they are concepts concerned with human behaviour that may or may not influence behaviour. A government is an organisation with physical representations such as buildings filled with politicians. They have a physical existence in a way that a concept does not.

I'm not sure the snip was fair, maybe he started awkward but he kinda explained what he meant.
I'm not just saying this 'cause me and Ecurb are best pals, it's just, it's an odd thread.

Ecurb, what you explain as morality, I could easily explain as something else.

Think of it this way, if you obey the government law are you deemed as a moral person or simply a law abiding person?
It seems that we think of moral decisions as being ones that do not have positive consequences to the person making the decision, and hence are made due to moral reasons rather than through self interest. This disqualifies all Christian morals for the Christian, and hence they are Christian law rather than morals.

[Stevil]

Think of it like this.
1. If a male kills another male so that he can take his female partner for his own sexual endevours would this be immoral?
2. If a male kills a female's offspring so that she will become free for him to procreate with would this be immoral?
3. If a female kills her lover and eats him, would this be immoral?

As you have probably guessed by now, the above are examples of common behaviours of various non human animals. Why if other animals can take actions and simply be acting in a way that is natural to them, to their species then why do we not classify them as immoral where-as we would classify humans as being immoral?

We don't judge them because we aren't in a position to, we don't know how they think.  I checked the definition of immoral, there's a doesn't follow moral principles one and  "Deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong"  Weather and earth quakes don't seem much different.

So, if you don't believe in objective morality then how can you define "accepted principles of right and wrong?".
I would like to know also how you define "right" and how you define "wrong" does it become a circular reference such that right is that which is moral, wrong is that which is immoral? or do you have some reasoning towards a goal e.g. stable and functional society.
This would be more along the lines of reasoning for self preservation, a selfish interest which disqualifies the concept of morality.

[Tank]

Saying there is no such thing as ethics or morality is like saying there is no such thing as government or political parties. {snip}

I think you have come up with a false analogy there. ethics/morality have no physical reality, they are concepts concerned with human behaviour that may or may not influence behaviour. A government is an organisation with physical representations such as buildings filled with politicians. They have a physical existence in a way that a concept does not.

I'm not sure the snip was fair, maybe he started awkward but he kinda explained what he meant.
I'm not just saying this 'cause me and Ecurb are best pals, it's just, it's an odd thread.

Looking back the snip was a little premature. Let's see what Bruce has to add.

[pytheas]

I don't believe in ethics or morality.

you don't need to believe, you already function utilising some modality as such.

children learn right and wrong before they can explain or understand it, it is a societal prerequisite

apart from the excellent response about macintyre,  virtue and uncle Telis, a nice book by albert camus "the Stranger" illustrates how lack of  emotion is related to true amoralism. You dont feel right and wrong, irrespective of what you believe if you are amoral, close relative of psychopath.

i dont want to link amorality with psychopathy, but the ones I met fitted the bill and had serious problems with socialising in everyday life