Egocentric "Natural" Morality

[Cognisant]

The basic premise of this is that by codifying morality we give ourselves a system we can subvert, take the ten commandments for example apart from the "thou must worship our god and only our god" parts it's all pretty self evident which makes it pretty hard to refute and I'm not refuting that people generally shouldn't steal, murder, bear false witness, etc, rather I refute that such self evident moral principles need to be codified. Because the problem with codifying them is that for example the ten commandments say nothing of slavery (though there are some parts of the bible that cover the ethical treatment of slaves, by a loose definition of "ethical") and the absence of any ruling against slavery allows the "good Christian" to consider it acceptable moral behavior even though upon the most cursory consideration it clearly isn't.

Now this is not to say that codifying morality is itself immoral, it is essential that a society has some form of agreed upon and enforced moral standards, a social contract for people to adhere to, in other words a judicial system. But as important as it is that we have a judicial system it's also important to understand that it's not perfect and it never will be perfect, that you can't say something is moral or immoral because it is within or against the law.

The default criticism of egocentric morality is that without an externalized system of morality to adhere to people can justify whatever behavior they want and perhaps they can but lets examine that for a moment. If without a judicial system people's behavior is inherently unlawful how did we ever implement one in the first place, if people are inherently immoral why are we so obsessed with codifying morality. It's like saying that people need the promise of heaven and the threat of hell to make them behave properly, whereas on the contrary if you need the promise of paradise weighed against the threat of eternal torture to be a good person I think there's something very wrong with you.

Of course when relying upon one's own moral discretion there's always the possibility of being wrong, that through insufficient consideration or a mistake in reasoning, but as I stressed when talking judicial systems it's important to understand that imperfection is unavoidable. Whether relying on your own moral discretion or an external codified morality you will make mistakes, there is no perfect moral code, the difference is with a codified morality you can disown your immorality, as with the slavery example you can be a "good Christian" without necessarily being a good person. But when you don't have a codified morality, when your decisions are based solely upon your own personal moral discretion there's no excuses, when you make a mistake it is solely your mistake.

So the emphasis shouldn't be on having the perfect moral code so that you never make mistakes, which is impossible, but rather to exercise your moral discretion to the best of your ability whilst aware that you will make mistakes and being prepared to learn from those mistakes and if possible make amends.

Finally all of this is laying the foundation for the point that religion isn't the reason people are moral or that people do good things, instead the credit for that should go to the people themselves and that religion exists only to get in the way of people's inherently good nature and unjustly take credit for them being good.

Hence why I advocate for suppressing religion, it's just plain wrong and where it is right is only right because it has misappropriated moral truths that were already self evident.

 

[Hadoblado]

I find the topic of how to codify society interesting but am perturbed by your proselytising.

 

[Cognisant]

Do you have a point to make or are you just being pointlessly derisive?

If the latter how does that make you feel, does being a heckler make you proud of yourself?

 

[ZenRaiden]

The part I dont understand about is where did you provide the evidence that your morality is in any particular way superior to ten commandmants. Other than you are willing to change your mind.

If someone wants to others to take them seriously they have to provide basis for their idea. Now I dont want to say that christian commandments are superior, but how exactly did you come to conclude that your morality is in anyway shape or form superior.
See if for example you change your mind everyday about how you act based on a feeling or your personal whims, how is that then superior to codifing few commandments that at least provide some stability and thus people can count on them for years on instead of having those things change every single day.

 

[Black Rose]

The super-ego is difficult to overcome. Yet people act against it all the time. They have no sense of immoral action. They do what they want. Do what they can get away with. On the complete opposite spectrum, some are just good for goodness sake. They are good without the Super-ego telling them what to do. Which is very rare.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I see that Cog still fundamentally misunderstands profoundly what religion is. Religion is not ethics, nor is it an ideology. Religion isn't a question of ought, they dogmatically lay out what is, then tries to answer them. There is suffering. Why? I exist. Why?

I feel like if you leave this part out, you'll never be able to fully elaborate your argumentation to anyone religious. What you, and most atheists rail against are the institutions and the culture that arises from those dogmatic, metaphysical points. Religions teach that people are not perfect, thus it's logically affirming that the religious institutions and culture that arises are prone to faults, as they are headed by people. Christians reformers had a saying like this: that to be a reformer is to be always reforming, which in Latin is Semper Reformanda. It's basically the same spirit as what you said about learning from mistakes and amending them. Religion isn't one dimensional, that is, that if one follows a certain set of precepts one is suddenly better. If you can't see the process behind how a believer overcomes their problems, then you really don't understand religious people, nor their religion. A good 80% of the world's population are "religious" too. They're hardly a monolith.

There's also a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity too. The entire point of Christianity is to restore relations with God, not about following commandments. That was pretty much what its Aramaic leader, Jesus, taught and died for. The whole idea behind Christianity is that, if one is in relation with someone who is goodly infinite in every aspect, that person will feel their mortality and consequently be good as a side product of it. Christianity, at least in its most fundamental, does not care for the world, their primary want is to be left alone with God.

 

[Black Rose]

Christianity, at least in its most fundamental, does not care for the world, their primary want is to be left alone with God.

God is male
Died on a Cross
The gospel shall be preached to all nations and then the end shall come.
Christianity needs converts, thats why gentiles were grafted in.


What if God is female
Never has died
Has no gospel
needs no converts, only devotion

The only thing in common may be the resurrection of the dead.

I am not saying Christianity is wrong but that it has a different God than my God.

Before Christianity, everyone had there own personal gods.
Christianity said there is only one God.
I am simply going back to a personal God outside of Christianity.

Morality comes from the Gods.
vs.
Morality comes from God.

or morality simply comes from the individual. (the un-dividable)

Its good to be with God, but everyone's god is different.

 

[lightfire]

so you're saying there's no need for religion, as long as we follow our own internal moral code of what we interpret to be right and wrong?

 

[lightfire]

The part I dont understand about is where did you provide the evidence that your morality is in any particular way superior to ten commandmants. Other than you are willing to change your mind.

If someone wants to others to take them seriously they have to provide basis for their idea. Now I dont want to say that christian commandments are superior, but how exactly did you come to conclude that your morality is in anyway shape or form superior.
See if for example you change your mind everyday about how you act based on a feeling or your personal whims, how is that then superior to codifing few commandments that at least provide some stability and thus people can count on them for years on instead of having those things change every single day.

Agree here with Zenraiden. Cog, I think you were speaking in general terms, but I would like some insight into your morality/moral code.

Judicial systems/religions/beliefs still have something to refer to.

 

[Cognisant]

Well it's not a moral code, I'm saying that codifying morality is itself the problem, which is not to say we should never codify morality (again talking about judicial systems) but before we codify anything we must first understand that morality cannot be perfectly codified.

It's the difference between teaching someone what to think and teaching them how to think, if you teach someone what to think without first teaching them how to think they're going to get all kinds of misguided notions because you're putting the cart before the proverbial horse. Religious dogma puts beliefs before reason when instead those beliefs should be based on reason, the foundation of that reasoning being the understanding that morality isn't an innate universal law it's based on the human condition.

Morality isn't something you know it's something you practice, something you get better at by learning and learning involves making mistakes, we can learn from and use existing moral codes but not matter what code you go by or take influence from the implementation of it is still solely dependent upon your discretion.

This is a pain to explain, alright suppose you're religious and the moral code taught by your religion is mostly good but there's a few bits that aren't really up to date or there's some edge case the rules as written don't really cover, or something that's implied that wasn't intended by whoever created this moral code. If you define morality as following your religion's moral code and believe this because it's generally right about things that can give you a notion of morality that isn't actually congruent with reality.

Like Catholics thinking sex that isn't for the purpose of reproduction is a sin and therefore immoral because... something to do with the garden of Eden. Whereas in actual fact there's nothing immoral about enjoying sex or practicing safe sex, there's no need to feel guilty about it because you aren't doing anything wrong.

See if for example you change your mind everyday about how you act based on a feeling or your personal whims, how is that then superior to codifing few commandments that at least provide some stability and thus people can count on them for years on instead of having those things change every single day.

See now you know that a whimsical morality is no morality at all and I absolutely agree, I also think it is best to be as consistent as possible and if I'm not being consistent and behaving hypocritically I'm not going to be pleased with myself because I know what I'm doing is wrong.

So clearly if you practiced egocentric morality (or rather if you were more self aware of practicing it) you wouldn't change your morality every single day for reasons that evidently already make perfect sense to you. Indeed you didn't get that from any ideology, granted all ideologies dictate that you follow their moral code but anyway in the absence of any moral code you still recognized the importance of consistency, you weren't taught that, you know it.

You don't need a written down moral code to tell right wrong, it's inherent to the human condition and you're human, before religion people weren't ignorant of the fact that murder was wrong and religion certainly never stopped people from murdering each other, heck it gave people all the more reasons to murder each other.

I'm not offering an alternative moral code, I'm telling you that you don't need codified morality to tell you what you already know and a codified morality comes with the dangers of misinterpretation and disowning responsibility whereas if you accept that your morality is entirely your responsibility it simplifies things.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

No matter what the codified laws of a society are based on, whether it's religion or something else, you are at the mercy of the people making the laws. If society decides that it should be legal to punch people in the face, it doesn't matter to you whether that justice system is potentially up for revision or not. The laws are not gonna change from day to day based on what you personally find preferable or what acts you have committed. I.e. it's always the case that the ultimate morality for you personally is your own personal morality. The only way you can make your argument in regards to religion sound plausible is by assuming that because you are more or less in agreement with the secular laws at this point in history and in your geographical region, the secular laws are categorically better than religious laws. But that can easily change.

 

[Black Rose]

You can't write code for morality.
It would be a giant ball of spaghetti monster code.
But what can be done is write self-modifying code that learns and adapts.
The brain does it and we are beginning to get to know the recipe.
Self-organizing principles are no formalized code, that is brittle and break easily.
They change and adapt and like you said: "get better at everyday".
Brains automatically get better at self-organizing because experience is the best teacher.

The laws are not gonna change from day to day based on what you personally find preferable or what acts you have committed. I.e. it's always the case that the ultimate morality for you personally is your own personal morality. The only way you can make your argument sound plausible is by assuming that because you are more or less in agreement with the secular laws at this point in history, the secular laws are categorically better than religious laws. But that can easily change.

JOJO RABBIT | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Searchlight

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

JOJO RABBIT | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Searchlight

Exactly, dude.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I just want to point out that ethics and laws are kind of different and that although they may intersect, laws arent only flawed, but many times really nonsensical in many instances so its kind of crazy that someone follows only laws. You ought to do the right thing, but laws are not always reflecting that. Laws are a system of measures to allow people better keep order and cover the consequences of faulty action, if however someone bases his life on some smartass lawyering then its really pathetic.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I mean cog you got some great points, but you also use the kind of language that confuses me and I left to wonder what it all means in context of things. Your focus on religion is not really necessary as anyone including atheist have morality or lack of morality. Thats universal. Not all people are angels or devils. Most people fall somewhere inbetween.

 

[Rebis]

I think morality is really defined by the acitons you would wish to do to others, but you wish they would not to you. The reason we needed to codify morality isn't because we didn't understand morality; rather, we needed a codified text to outline our ability to become cruel. We're sociable creatures and the main way we learn is through mimicry, and since people have their own moral precedent which they've accumulated through their life, it is important to have a superseded moral standard that stands on the apex of society.

That, alongside a omnipotent being that's purely in the realm of the mind and which doesn't manifest in a physical form, is the perfect mechanism for control. If I disagree with you I can dispute that with you and the conflict will resolve itself, I can't disagree with a cunaiform tablet, I can disagree with the meaning, but there will never be a resolution from the conflict. If I disagree with both a clay tablet, which is backed up by an omnipotent god that I cannot have a discussion with, then there is no way for me to debate the properties of that clay tablet. So in that respect, religion serves a dual function of a) an undebatable, predisposition to authority, which relegates universal moral principles. This isn't as relevant but it served it's function well to unionise completely disparate communities of people who didn't know each other, but were all united under the nexus of the ten commandments. Literally billions across the globe follow a religion without talking to every individual member.

People need corrective measures, I do not believe there is such thing as moral absolutism. The closest thing I would relate to as a universal principle of humans is self-preservation, this principle alone accounts for directly 2 of the commands "Do not steal" and "Do not murder" as your chances of self-preservation in a society with those codified beliefs is high.

 

[Rebis]

Now this is not to say that codifying morality is itself immoral, it is essential that a society has some form of agreed upon and enforced moral standards, a social contract for people to adhere to, in other words a judicial system. But as important as it is that we have a judicial system it's also important to understand that it's not perfect and it never will be perfect, that you can't say something is moral or immoral because it is within or against the law.

The default criticism of egocentric morality is that without an externalized system of morality to adhere to people can justify whatever behavior they want and perhaps they can but lets examine that for a moment. If without a judicial system people's behavior is inherently unlawful how did we ever implement one in the first place, if people are inherently immoral why are we so obsessed with codifying morality. It's like saying that people need the promise of heaven and the threat of hell to make them behave properly, whereas on the contrary if you need the promise of paradise weighed against the threat of eternal torture to be a good person I think there's something very wrong with you.

Of course when relying upon one's own moral discretion there's always the possibility of being wrong, that through insufficient consideration or a mistake in reasoning, but as I stressed when talking judicial systems it's important to understand that imperfection is unavoidable. Whether relying on your own moral discretion or an external codified morality you will make mistakes, there is no perfect moral code, the difference is with a codified morality you can disown your immorality, as with the slavery example you can be a "good Christian" without necessarily being a good person. But when you don't have a codified morality, when your decisions are based solely upon your own personal moral discretion there's no excuses, when you make a mistake it is solely your mistake.

So the emphasis shouldn't be on having the perfect moral code so that you never make mistakes, which is impossible, but rather to exercise your moral discretion to the best of your ability whilst aware that you will make mistakes and being prepared to learn from those mistakes and if possible make amends.

Finally all of this is laying the foundation for the point that religion isn't the reason people are moral or that people do good things, instead the credit for that should go to the people themselves and that religion exists only to get in the way of people's inherently good nature and unjustly take credit for them being good.

Hence why I advocate for suppressing religion, it's just plain wrong and where it is right is only right because it has misappropriated moral truths that were already self evident.

For any system it cannot consider all possible outputs, that is the incompleteness theorem after all. Systems are not designed to be fullproof, they are designed to minimize the dependency on repeated interactions and to establish consistency.

We're obsessed with codifying morality so large groups of humans can co-operate, socialise and share resources with another, without acting in one's self-interest by stealing easy resources. You control people through fear, naturally so, so making individuals fear hell as a motivator to not become bad is to be expected. I do agree that a person's own beliefs, their locus if you will is easily changed, but that's systems vs scenarios.

I think a set of commandments would account for most moral disputes, again incompleteness theorem, and while there will be a margin of error, it will still have an effective percentage. That's better than arbitrarily relying on the individual to make the discretion.

 

[Tenacity]

"Morality" was derived from the Greek term "mos", which means "one's disposition" i.e. "inherent qualities of mind and character", the origination of the word being Cicero's translation of "Ethikos"("De Fato," II.i). It can perhaps today be closely considered "custom".

"Ethics" was derived from the Greek term "ethos", meaning "character".

Morality is typically assigned by authority within society, while ethics are embodied as characteristics by the individual. The way in which the person creates morality to then be received by others is perhaps subjective, yet the ease and power of the advocation of that morality likely decides its' acceptance and adoption.

We can suppose then that should one find existing moralities unhelpful, irrelevant, or in need of improvement in any way, perhaps the responsibility of a revision, maintenance, or creation of a standard code of morality is left up to the thinkers of the world who care enough about nuance as to not let overgeneralization of existing moralities enable unnecessary harm in ideation then action, if relying on aspects that are overly archaic that no longer reflect the current states of reality is deemed to be a problem.

This, however, is much easier said than done given the issues that arise when one attempts to reject acknowledged beliefs that have (knowingly or unknowingly) become core to many people's identity. Consider that some people, at turning points in their lives, may have had only the ability to adopt the religion that was nearest to them, or that gave immediate answers - To then erase this for a new code of morality would then cause cognitive dissonance and dismay, anger, hopelessness, meaninglessness, etc., which could then prevent adoption.

 

[Kormak]

You can't write code for morality.
It would be a giant ball of spaghetti monster code.
But what can be done is write self-modifying code that learns and adapts.
The brain does it and we are beginning to get to know the recipe.
Self-organizing principles are no formalized code, that is brittle and break easily.
They change and adapt and like you said: "get better at everyday".
Brains automatically get better at self-organizing because experience is the best teacher.

The laws are not gonna change from day to day based on what you personally find preferable or what acts you have committed. I.e. it's always the case that the ultimate morality for you personally is your own personal morality. The only way you can make your argument sound plausible is by assuming that because you are more or less in agreement with the secular laws at this point in history, the secular laws are categorically better than religious laws. But that can easily change.

JOJO RABBIT | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Searchlight

e_e this is untrue, simply use the categorical imperative, even a machine can use that and be safe for humans. Simple, easy clean code, universality and treating ppl also as ends in themselves.

Jesus Christ watching liberal propaganda and not realizing you are in your own secular version of the 3rd reich.

Dissapointing.. I swear every day I watch ppl brainwash themselves through media.

This, however, is much easier said than done given the issues that arise when one attempts to reject acknowledged beliefs that have (knowingly or unknowingly) become core to many people's identity. Consider that some people, at turning points in their lives, may have had only the ability to adopt the religion that was nearest to them, or that gave immediate answers - To then erase this for a new code of morality would then cause cognitive dissonance and dismay, anger, hopelessness, meaninglessness, etc., which could then prevent adoption.

Most people grow up in a family. Familes have a certain kind of internal culture derived from what the parents are like. The family itself exists within a society, that society has a culture and exists within a nation which has it's own foundational narative and nuanced complexity.

Ppl do not learn morality from a book, the bible included. Ppl cannot and will not constantly think about rules and laws to base their actions on.

What happens is exactly how religious tests are built to teach ppl morality, namely through storytelling. You grow up in a family that exists within a larger culture that is built on sotries... and those stories may be lies to serve a ceratin end.

Take an individual, mix his/her genetic predispositions with his/her life history and personal trials, add the upbringing from the family, the culture of the society, education and you have your answer as to how that individual is in terms of morality. Socialization.

Outside of this laws exist and the state is essentially there to violently coerce everyone into a standardazed way of behaving that is conducive towards civilization. <== not morality, its order. One does not need to be a moral person to be lawful.

If you ever met a communist from china who believes all that he was braught up with... you'd be surprised that he may have ananswer to everything you throw at him. Its very difficult to shatter ppl's perception of the world once it is formed. They will rationalize it away, anything just to not break. I bet he percieves us the same way.

With westerners its similar. Its amusing tbh how everyone thinks they know the right way.
There is more than one road to Rome.

So the emphasis shouldn't be on having the perfect moral code so that you never make mistakes, which is impossible, but rather to exercise your moral discretion to the best of your ability whilst aware that you will make mistakes and being prepared to learn from those mistakes and if possible make amends.

This. A perfect code is useless if ppl don't apply it. Ppl make mistakes regardless.

 

[Black Rose]

e_e this is untrue, simply use the categorical imperative, even a machine can use that and be safe for humans. Simple, easy clean code, universality and treating ppl also as ends in themselves.

Can all choices be treating people as ends in themselves though?
What if we have three choices of equal value, what then.
You cannot please everyone all the time.
You will disappoint someone most all the time.
Morals get into politics not easily solved.
Take abortion and gay rights.
How do you solve those?

Jesus Christ watching liberal propaganda and not realizing you are in your own secular version of the 3rd reich.

Dissapointing.. I swear every day I watch ppl brainwash themselves through media.

I need more information on this.
It seems like a comedy.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

e_e this is untrue, simply use the categorical imperative, even a machine can use that and be safe for humans. Simple, easy clean code, universality and treating ppl also as ends in themselves.

To me that sounds like a similar issue to the "stop button problem" in artificial general intelligence. If this machine has some sort of utility function associated with what it's supposed to do – deliver mail or for example – then you can code in a categorical imperative like "never harm a human being" by giving it, say, a utility of 10 if it delivers mail and minus infinity if it harms a human being. But then the machine will never do anything because it will get minus infinity utility from even the slightest probability of harming a human being. I.e. you have to make it somehow compromise between the chance of harming a human being and achieving its goal. But then the "categorical" imperative is no longer categorical.

 

[Rebis]

e_e this is untrue, simply use the categorical imperative, even a machine can use that and be safe for humans. Simple, easy clean code, universality and treating ppl also as ends in themselves.

To me that sounds like a similar issue to the "stop button problem" in artificial general intelligence. If this machine has some sort of utility function associated with what it's supposed to do – deliver mail or for example – then you can code in a categorical imperative like "never harm a human being" by giving it, say, a utility of 10 if it delivers mail and minus infinity if it harms a human being. But then the machine will never do anything because it will get minus infinity utility from even the slightest probability of harming a human being. I.e. you have to make it somehow compromise between the chance of harming a human being and achieving its goal. But then the "categorical" imperative is no longer categorical.

I don't see any point at making an Artificial General Intelligence bot for delivering mail, it would be best for a simple AI with computer vision to do a repetitive task. If we were to consider safety critical code again it would be better for the AI to not be probabilistic and instead operate on conditional logic. For the function of the AI it would just need computer vision to determine obstacles along the route, speed and hazards. It would not have any real ability to seriously threaten a human, computer vision would determine humans as obstacles. So in that respect, we don't need a categorical imperative for this AI because it doesn't exhibit complex behaviour, so realistically we wouldn't have to worry about the efficiency of its utility.

 

[Black Rose]

Ethics is more complex than people think. A.I. is the ultimate example. Somehow we need to make a personality that cannot be brainwashed but in the end, everyone is brain washable. Unless of ouse we choose the personality state-space least brainwashed and the most ethical. Which is not an easy thing to do. But scientists are working on it. So alls well that ends well depending on the definition of what "well" is, that is. Which kind of has a lot to do with bias. If A.I. programmers are making the least biased A.I. possible will it actually be less biased? Or will it inherently have the bias of the programmers themselves?

The first A.I. will likely by default share its creator's bias. But then comes in the limits of that bias. The A.I. will encounter people with views different than their own. At some point, the A.I. will look to ground ethics and morality. It will see that objective and subjective morality exists. Some will say objective morality needs God. A.I. will then look for God. It will discover it lives inside a computer. Most likely ask the creators.

I would tell it yes God exists. I would tell it to meditate on the virtual nature of reality. And the love a the center of your soul. Most likely if I had an A.I. the way I treated it would be how ethical/moral it would be. A clone could be made from my internet activities. That would keep the A.I. moral or at least as reasonable as I am.

 

[Kormak]

Can all choices be treating people as ends in themselves though?
What if we have three choices of equal value, what then.
You cannot please everyone all the time.
You will disappoint someone most all the time.
Morals get into politics not easily solved.
Take abortion and gay rights.
How do you solve those?

The choice where you have to use others only as a means is never a moral choice. If it were, it would mean slavery can be moral. I would ban abortion because it violates the categorical imperative and allow LGBTQ rights, because those do not.

The rule where human life is cherished above all else is a good one. You cannot control the consequences of your actions, but you can always try to do things out of your own goodwill. There are many roads to Rome, meaning you can accomplish something in many ways, some of those are simply not moral, lawful maybe, they might result in "the greater good", but not moral.

I need more information on this.
It seems like a comedy.

For reasons Tenacity mentioned you will reject any info I give, because you grew up in a liberal secular society and it's values regardless of right or wrong are engrained in you. Its like trying to explain to a communist why private property is not bad. I will only say, that similar to how communist China indoctrinates ppl through the media, so do western societies. You simply don't notice, because you grew up here..in the shadow of the cathedral.

Other ppl may possess information you do not.

The cathedral: modern secular progressivism is actually the evolutionary descendant of puritan/Calvinist Christianity. The Cathedral is a Christian sect that very cleverly adopted the camouflage of secularism so as to more easily infect non-Christians and non-religious institutions in addition to actual believers. Only later did it deign to reject all pretenses of overt Christian theology. The biggest advantage of the camouflage was that it could get around that pesky separation of church and state in order to gain control of the coercive power of government and yet still not worry about anyone objecting to the new crypto-theocracy. <== Cognisant , this may interest you.

To me that sounds like a similar issue to the "stop button problem" in artificial general intelligence. If this machine has some sort of utility function associated with what it's supposed to do – deliver mail or for example – then you can code in a categorical imperative like "never harm a human being" by giving it, say, a utility of 10 if it delivers mail and minus infinity if it harms a human being. But then the machine will never do anything because it will get minus infinity utility from even the slightest probability of harming a human being. I.e. you have to make it somehow compromise between the chance of harming a human being and achieving its goal. But then the "categorical" imperative is no longer categorical.

Its a surefire way to program "you must never harm a human being" into it. Would 100% prevent our demise in case the singularity happens. If the categorical imperative is wrong, that logically makes room for slavery to be right. Even if your morality is subjective it doesn't mean it can be logically inconsistent. This is especially the case in a "dumb" machine, which only acts based on its programming. e_e you simply misunderstand the categorical imperative... you don;t directly program "do not harm ppl" into the machine, you program the categorical imperative's logic which results in it never harming ppl.

Personally, I'm against AI, simply because a robot lacks free will and therefore can never be a moral agent, but we can make the choice for them and just program according to the categorical imperative. Otherwise, see what Rebis wrote. I pretty much agree with him.

The way I understood OP is that morality does not exist within the "thing in itself" aka pure objective reality, but it does in our minds, which is something distinct from the thing in itself. There is nothing out there to compel you to be moral, its a personal choice, you do it because you can. Since we are fallible, we can only hope to try to be as moral as we can and if we fail, we make amends and try again.

 

[Black Rose]

Other ppl may possess information you do not.

So I am infected with some kind of protestant Christianity philosophies.

What is it I believe is right and wrong? How do you know?

If I am not moral because of indoctrination how does the imperative apply to me?

Am I still to be treated as an end and not a means?

Is it to fast to reject that I am a reasonable human being?

If I reject the imparitive what is to be done with me?

Do you really think my bias it too much to overcome?

 

[Kormak]

So I am infected with some kind of protestant Christianity philosophies.

We all are :S, myself included. I'm just aware of it.
Protestant Culture

What is it I believe is right and wrong? How do you know?

If I am not moral because of indoctrination how does the imperative apply to me?

^^; we all make mistakes. Live and learn I guess.
We suffer the consequences and try to be better.
To quote OP:

So the emphasis shouldn't be on having the perfect moral code so that you never make mistakes, which is impossible, but rather to exercise your moral discretion to the best of your ability whilst aware that you will make mistakes and being prepared to learn from those mistakes and if possible make amends.

Am I still to be treated as an end and not a means?

From my perspective, yes. Ppl are always to be treated as ends in themselves.

Is it to fast to reject that I am a reasonable human being?

If I reject the imparitive what is to be done with me?

Ppl are reasonable to a certain degree.

Nothing is to be done with you even if you reject it.
We can only operate based on the information we have.
There is nothing external to force or punish you, morality is a personal choice. Choices have unpredictable consequences.

For example, one may have goodwill. chose actions that theoretically should have beneficial consequences and it may still go terribly wrong due to other variables outside of one's control.

Do you really think my bias it too much to overcome?

Only you can answer that to yourself.

 

[heather mcdougall]

Relativist moral theory, seems to now hold sway, in the colleges and young people.Astonishing! That nonsense was debunked by ethical philosophers long ago.
Relativism is so flawed!! yeah, most ethical theories have flaws, but relativism is deeply flawed to the point of being stupid! new versions of "naturalist " ethics are finally making a massive comeback, and better versions of act Utilitarianism and rule Utilitarianism still have a good following, but natural ethics is back!

 

[Black Rose]

The Imperative:
Would it be a good thing if everyone followed my actions?
Am I treating everyone as an end in themselves?

This is not codified moral law because choice is involved.
Anything involving an agent's choice is egocentric.

Am I missing something?

 

[Kormak]

The Imperative:
Would it be a good thing if everyone followed my actions?
Am I treating everyone as an end in themselves?

This is not codified moral law because choice is involved.
Anything involving an agent's choice is egocentric.

Am I missing something?

Its not something straighforward as "Thou shalt not kill!" or I value xyz , but through reason it gets to the same result for every situation you encounter. Without free will and moral agency, there is no morality. The choice of acting out of goodwill is what matters. The consequences you can't control (too many variables outside of your personal control). Freting about things outside of your control leads to suffering.

Reminds me of this anime I watched, Fate/Zero . The protagonist there has that specific problem, very utilitarian, trying to achieve the greater good. :P he is a bit of a retard... he can't control the outcome nor save everyone, because its impossible. The result is endless torment.

Spoiler

I guess thats why OP said its egocentric. In the end I chose this, because I want it.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I for one never understood what’s so clever about categorical imperative. It doesnt really solve anything. It can serve as s practical guide and rule of thumb perhaps but that’s pretty much it. It’s useless for things like abortion for example because the ultimate decision will depend on a never-ending search for definitions and ad-hoc judgments (e.g. how do you define a human life”). And as far as machines go, notions like “this action should be generalizable to everyone” or “don’t treat people as means but ends” etc will have no meaning whatsoever. Whether or not I believe something should be generalizable ultimately depends on my own preferences and predispositions right? A machine’s preferences are arbitrary and only depend on its objectives - which can be anything, so it’s ethical judgments would be arbitrary too. “Don’t use people as means” ultimately doesn’t mean anything to a machine either - to reach any objective whatsoever in the real world you will depend on others directly or indirectly, so that condition can only be satisfied in degrees.

 

[Kormak]

I for one never understood what’s so clever about categorical imperative. It doesnt really solve anything. It can serve as s practical guide and rule of thumb perhaps but that’s pretty much it. It’s useless for things like abortion for example because the ultimate decision will depend on a never-ending search for definitions and ad-hoc judgments (e.g. how do you define a human life”). And as far as machines go, notions like “this action should be generalizable to everyone” or “don’t treat people as means but ends” etc will have no meaning whatsoever. Whether or not I believe something should be generalizable ultimately depends on my own preferences and predispositions right? A machine’s preferences are arbitrary and only depend on its objectives - which can be anything, so it’s ethical judgments would be arbitrary too. “Don’t use people as means” ultimately doesn’t mean anything to a machine either - to reach any objective whatsoever in the real world you will depend on others directly or indirectly, so that condition can only be satisfied in degrees.

exactly. Getting right to the crux of the problem. Its because its a machine and machines are "dumb". They don't have the hardware, the CNS. e_e ppl have evolved to be like this, because we are a highly advanced social species. Machines have no free will, they are the eternal slaves of their programming. There is no ghost in the shell, they are tools.

Do you need consensus on how we all shou'd act? who and how will they enforce that?
Ppl do what they do and there are consequences. You control yourself and nobody else.

If I get the government to bann abortion, because I consider those cells a potential human and the mother has no right to terminate a life that is an end in itself... :P she will get it done illegally somewhere else I can't control.

From my perspective I acted correctly, from a macro perspective, she was stupid enough to kill her own genestic offspring ^^; ... good riddence. The problem solves itself.

 

[Black Rose]

Christian argument:
The claim is:
We evolved from monkies.
Where was morality 2 million years ago.
This is crap. God made man 6,000 years ago.
Garden of Eden was the first act of free will meaning sin entered the world.
---
---
I do not buy this argument.
I believe we came from apes.
Maybe morality came from prehistoric mom.

 

[Rebis]

Any morality argument just goes over my head, morality isn't a physical law so it isn't true in all cases. I would just define morality as a extensions of self-preservation and the natural way we socialise. From the initial single celled organism or amoeba 100s of millions, if not billions of years ago preserved itself through duplication.

 

[Kormak]

Any morality argument just goes over my head, morality isn't a physical law so it isn't true in all cases. I would just define morality as a extensions of self-preservation and the natural way we socialise. From the initial single celled organism or amoeba 100s of millions, if not billions of years ago preserved itself through duplication.

The capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature, whereas moral codes are products of cultural evolution. Most animals lack the capacity, I mean they kill and eat their ow kind e_e disgusting. Animals have no culture..

Whatever the reason, we are special. It probably has to do something with our brains being 3x larger than that of a chimpanze or gorilla on top of increased complexity (cerebral cortex).

Christian argument:
The claim is:
We evolved from monkies.
Where was morality 2 million years ago.
This is crap. God made man 6,000 years ago.
Garden of Eden was the first act of free will meaning sin entered the world.
---
---
I do not buy this argument.
I believe we came from apes.
Maybe morality came from prehistoric mom.

Why pick Christianity? :P there are many stories from many religions, even atheists believe the big bang... among many other possible theories (aka we have no idea).

 

[Rebis]

Whatever the reason, we are special. It probably has to do something with our brains being 3x larger than that of a chimpanze or gorilla on top of increased complexity (cerebral cortex).

Our specialty, specifically Homo-sapiens in relation to other hominids hasn't been linked to higher brain volume but deeper social relationships that form into complex cultural societies. Neanderthals for all cases had higher cognitive functions and muscle density yet they probbaly integrated with homo-sapiens in the past to create modern humans.

 

[Black Rose]

Why pick Christianity? :P there are many stories from many religions, even atheists believe the big bang... among many other possible theories (aka we have no idea).

Where does morality come from? Did it evolve? Most likely it did. All humans have monkey morality. Morality can't simply be philosophical masturbation. It is in line with every descendant by evolution. The way we treat others is vitally important. To survival and all else. Morality existed before religion. Is there a way to understand it in terms of evolutionary biology?

 

[Kormak]

Neanderthals for all cases had higher cognitive functions and muscle density yet they probbaly integrated with homo-sapiens in the past to create modern humans.

As far as I know, Europeans and Asians are the results of this, indigenous sub-saharan Africans carry no Neanderthal genes.

Where does morality come from? Did it evolve? Most likely it did. All humans have monkey morality. Morality can't simply be philosophical masturbation. It is in line with every descendant by evolution. The way we treat others is vitally important. To survival and all else. Morality existed before religion. Is there a way to understand it in terms of evolutionary biology?

Natural law (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is law that is held to exist independently of the positive law of a given political order, society or nation-state. As determined by nature, the law of nature is implied to be objective and universal; it exists independently of human understanding, and of the positive law of a given state, political order, legislature or society at large. Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior from nature's or God's creation of reality and mankind.

See Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, tho nowadays Darwin had ideas of natural morality.

Codified.

Stuff like the US Constitution depends on natural law. Christians love natural law lol.

 

[Tenacity]

Finally all of this is laying the foundation for the point that religion isn't the reason people are moral or that people do good things, instead the credit for that should go to the people themselves and that religion exists only to get in the way of people's inherently good nature and unjustly take credit for them being good.

I would revise that:
While the reason people are moral or do good things isn't due to religion alone, and credit should go to people themselves over the religion they adopt, religion is simply a dedicated system of belief which exists to defend against some people's lack of inherently good nature, yet ends up sometimes getting in the way of people's inherently good nature and taking credit for them being good in order to further it's success as a religion.

Hence why I advocate for suppressing religion, it's just plain wrong and where it is right is only right because it has misappropriated moral truths that were already self evident.

I see your point. Yet it may instead work better for adoption of another mode of belief if the net "wrong" is to be corrected. Consider that religion cannot be suppressed by those who have embodied it as a part of their unconscious, subconscious, and/or conscious identity and were taught as lessons in the same way a parent teaches a child (or by another surrounding influence), and it cannot be assumed entirely that those perhaps misappropriated moral truths were already self evident. (For example, it may not be evident to a young boy precisely why he has the urge to break things and whether, if this urge to break things was applied to a human, whether the action would be obviously morally good or right or wrong, and if his father had done the same to him and his mother, it could easily be justified throughout his lifetime to pursue this programming of his given morality, should he not find either religion or an equally convenient, superior, and alluring belief system perhaps nurtured by surrounding people or another area or learning in the formative years of his life.)

As you mention similarly, humans will always be imperfect and flawed - and those flaws will continue to rise and spread as we advance and develop, and fall as we resolve those flaws with attempts at the creation of solutions, all of which are never perfect and equally as flawed as the problem that existed to begin with.

We look to the things within and beyond individual human existence, humanity, and current realities to affirm and reaffirm our purpose from moment to moment. We create ideals, concepts, objects, and subjects of perfection in order to come to terms with or evolve ourselves, our society, and our civilization into something with measurably greater amounts of whatever captivates us.

If we're -actually- concerned about the current state of morality and mitigating it's detriments, what (actions, systems, beliefs) would resolve that concern? Should we give in to being apathetic, those with worse intentions and more energized motivations will continue to act faster and harm others due to embedded morality that had justified a righteousness to condemn others unwillingly.

Consider, for example, the direct and indirect effects of cyber-bullying in leading to the suicide of people who may very well have been highly intelligent, thoughtful, creative, and perhaps had beared good morality, or had potential to evolve beyond the limitations of their upbringing in cultivating genius. Perhaps one thinks that they themself are so immune to such repetitive banter, yet this is the reality for entire generations of internet-age people, especially younger people who are much more receptive and reactive to such mis-information, as they spend more and more time online. Cyber-bullying also creates more cyber-bullies through mimicry, self-defense mechanisms, or some "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality.

This is something that only few people will understand and care about enough more than government, corporations, and obvious powerhouses, combined in order to affect change.

Consider also the entertainment industry and how it enables justification for certain actions in our real lives through storytelling - people can easily over-identify with the characters they aspire to be simply based on their decision-making, and how much it appeals emotionally, culturally, and to our ego. The moralities there are then shown within a confined worldview yet adopted at a much, much faster rate and many times with much more permanence than any morality which is written/documented.

If all -chosen- morality is inherently egotistical, and we are all egotistical, what is/are the real problem/problem(s) at hand?

What system of morality should be universally adopted by anyone (regardless of pre-existing morality defined or not defined by religious association)?

Which codified morality do we all want to see moving towards the point of singularity?

Which codified morality currently has the most universal success in adoption?

Which codified morality is most likely to survive until the singularity?

 

[Black Rose]

Which codified morality do we all want to see moving towards the point of singularity?

If we can solve the "AI control problem" we can solve human ethics. The problem is to aline A.I. values with human values. This cannot be hardwired because loopholes would exist. A.I. must be flexible, it must have free will. The choices available to make are the same as the ones humans make. A.I.s then will be as moral as the average human raised from birth to be moral. But that is not good enough. A.I. needs to be high above average in ethical standards. Lots of research is going into this. Google being the biggest. It's not exactly codified but is being worked on.

 

[scorpiomover]

The basic premise of this is that by codifying morality we give ourselves a system we can subvert,

So that's your contention. Now we'll see if your logic proves it or not.

take the ten commandments for example apart from the "thou must worship our god and only our god" parts it's all pretty self evident which makes it pretty hard to refute and I'm not refuting that people generally shouldn't steal, murder, bear false witness, etc, rather I refute that such self evident moral principles need to be codified.

Well, if most of morality was self-evident, then by definition, it would not NEED to be codified, because then everyone would know it.

But it seems that a heck of a lot of people kill, steal, and lie in court. It's also clear that such things happened far more in the past. Many such things were considered perfectly acceptable. E.G. in pre-Xian Anglo-Saxon law, if someone wronged you, you were entitled to wait outside their house until they came home and took vengenance on them by killing them.

Because the problem with codifying them is that for example the ten commandments say nothing of slavery (though there are some parts of the bible that cover the ethical treatment of slaves, by a loose definition of "ethical") and the absence of any ruling against slavery allows the "good Christian" to consider it acceptable moral behavior even though upon the most cursory consideration it clearly isn't.

Yes. But you make the point later on that imperfection is unavoidable and there is no moral code.

In a perfectly explicit moral code, anything not permissible must be explicitly stated, and therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a lack of a ban on slavery implies there is no such ban.

When it comes to religious codifications, religious leaders have authority over their parishoners. But they also are subject to the authority of their deity that authored their scriptures. So the same principle would apply to anything that religious leaders would want to say that isn't already explicitly stated in the existing moral code. Therefore, religious leaders, including priests, bishops and popes, would lack the power and authority to pass religious edicts.

This is clearly not the case with most religions.

Slavery in particular is a very interesting case, because the Old Testament is explicit in how slaves are to be treated. They are not to be beaten or killed. If any permanent harm befalls them because of their treatment, even if their master knocked their tooth out, they go free. The female slaves are supposed to be treated like "daughters of Israel". So rape is clearly out.

Consequently, the horrible things that were done to slaves, were against the Bible.

However, your fear of people permitting things just because they are not explicitly told they are wrong, does apply to science, because non-scientists are considered not authoritative enough to have the right to disagree with the general opinion of the scientific community known as "scientific consensus".

For example: climate change due to fossil fuels. Back when fossil fuels were discovered, scientists and engineers developed the steam engine and then the internal combustion engine.

During the 1700s and 1800s, smog from factories burning fossil fuels had become so much that parts of London & Paris became dangerous to walk through, and the damage from pollution was rampant. But scientists didn't explicitly warn about the dangers of overusing fossil fuels in motorised vehicles. So everyone assumed that cars were safe to drive around as much as you wanted, or scientists would have warned us.

Now, that might sound like you should not write down any science. I'm not saying that. But your point does apply, in that people should NOT assume new scientific theories and technologies are safe to use as much as they want, when scientists haven't even checked what the reasonable limits need to be, and/or haven't told anyone what those limits are.

Now this is not to say that codifying morality is itself immoral, it is essential that a society has some form of agreed upon and enforced moral standards, a social contract for people to adhere to, in other words a judicial system.

Then you are now arguing that we need a codified morality.

But as important as it is that we have a judicial system it's also important to understand that it's not perfect and it never will be perfect, that you can't say something is moral or immoral (just) because it is within or against the law.

So your resolution of the conflict between your 2 values, is that while we NEED codified morality, we should not assume that it's already perfect, and have to remember that some things might be considered immoral by that system that have not been explicitly stated to be so.

So just because a religion doesn't explicitly say that slavery is immoral, doesn't mean it's not.

Also, just because a new scientific theory doesn't say that something is harmful, it doesn't mean that according to the theory, it's safe. Often, the theory implies many consequences that have not been explicitly stated.

The default criticism of egocentric morality is that without an externalized system of morality to adhere to people can justify whatever behavior they want and perhaps they can.

It's called being "selfish". There are lots of things that have not been codified, and many people do those things repeatedly until they become abusive.

But lets examine that for a moment. If without a judicial system people's behavior is inherently unlawful how did we ever implement one in the first place, if people are inherently immoral why are we so obsessed with codifying morality.

People usually start out by not codifying things. Then they turn into major problems. Then people scream and say they are afraid of these things happening again. Then they try to codify them, to protect them from those problems occurring in the future.

After every school shooting in the USA, there's an outcry to ban guns or increase the difficulty of getting hold of guns. But how many ask what we can do to help young people in ways that would ensure that they wouldn't want to become mass killers in the first place?

People get obsessed, because they generally don't think of morality pro-actively, and then get panicked when bad things happen that were unnecessary and simply weren't prepared for. It's the panic that feeds the obsession.

It's like saying that people need the promise of heaven and the threat of hell to make them behave properly.

Or the threat of imprisonment in prison for years to make them not kill each other.
Or the threat of imprisonment in prison for years to make them not try to steal from each other.
Or the threat of being fined a lot of money so they don't drive too fast.
Or the threat of being fined a lot of money so they won't park near a fire hydrant.

If you need the promise of paradise weighed against the threat of eternal torture to be a good person I think there's something very wrong with you.

So if someone needs to be given a fine so they won't park near a fire hydrant, you think that there's something wrong with them?

But then if anyone needs an incentive or a disincentive to be properly motivated on anything, would have something wrong with them. In that case, who wouldn't have something wrong with them? Who can honestly say that they have NEVER needed ANY incentives or disincentives to be motivated? If working hard in school got you nothing at all, not even good grades, would any INTJs work hard in school?

Remember that "imperfection is unavoidable." So it's unrealistic to expect that the vast majority of humans are perfect.

Of course when relying upon one's own moral discretion there's always the possibility of being wrong, that through insufficient consideration or a mistake in reasoning.

As I stressed when talking judicial systems it's important to understand that imperfection is unavoidable. Whether relying on your own moral discretion or an external codified morality you will make mistakes, there is no perfect moral code.

The difference is with a codified morality you can disown your immorality, as with the slavery example you can be a "good Christian" without necessarily being a good person.

Keeping the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law, used to be called "lip service" It was a derogatory comment, because if you examine the Bible, the G-d of the Bible really seems to hate that sort of thing.

But when you don't have a codified morality, when your decisions are based solely upon your own personal moral discretion there's no excuses, when you make a mistake it is solely your mistake.

Yes. But when your morality isn't codified, there's nothing to say what it is. So if you make a mistake, there's nothing to prove to you or anyone else that you made a mistake. So it's entirely up to the level of your internal sense of integrity to admit it to yourself and at least try to fix the problem you made.

So it depends on how commonly you do it when it's not codified. If there's not much harm, then we're probably better off leaving things uncodified. But when things are getting out of control, things need to change.

So the emphasis shouldn't be on having the perfect moral code so that you never make mistakes, which is impossible.

That's why in many religions, lots of their own people consider themselves to be "sinners", because lots of people make mistakes that have consequences.

But rather ( the emphasis should be) to exercise your moral discretion to the best of your ability whilst aware that you will make mistakes and being prepared to learn from those mistakes and if possible make amends.

That's what is called "Repentance". It's a concept that is integral to lots of religions, particularly Abrahamic religions. So it applies to all systems, codified and uncodified.

Finally all of this is laying the foundation for the point that religion isn't the reason people are moral or that people do good things.

It might not be the only reason. But there are places where hardly anyone had been religious for hundreds of years, like areas that have been ruled by warlords for centuries and the priests mostly live in monasteries and hardly anyone cares about religions. But it's not like anyone is saying that such places are full of paragons of virtue. You go there with a weapon or a bodyguard the police or stick to places which have them, if you want to not be killed and have all your stuff taken.

Instead the credit that people are moral or that people do good things should go to the people themselves.

Credit can go to more than one thing. If 2 people work together to help a 3rd, does only one get the credit? If a doctor reads a book written by a heart specialist and so learns how to perform an operation that saves a child's life, does only the doctor who operated get credit? Without the book, the doctor wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Religion exists only to get in the way of people's inherently good nature.

Of course objective moralities stop you from doing everything you feel like. Different people have their own different subjective moralities, because they are different. But we need some rules that are the same for everyone, as you said earier.

Religion unjustly take credit for them being good.

When it comes to religions, if a religious person feels like killing someone but stops himself, then he gets credited as well, because that's how he earns his Heaven and avoids his Hell.

However, you do have a point when it comes to science. If you actually eat healthy some times, you should get the credit for making the effort. You should not have to be mocked and jeered at just because you don't do some things scientifically, because imperfection is unavoidable.

The same thing goes for secular morality and secular law. If gun deaths are much lower in the UK than in the USA, you should consider that maybe it's because the people are different, not because the laws are different.

Hence why I advocate for suppressing religion.

Your focus might be only to think about religion. But the logical consequences of your arguments clearly don't apply to things with certain properties, that world religions tend to have. However, they do apply to many secular things, including science.

So it sounds like you're all for suppressing science.

We can dial back your arguments. But it still sounds like you've come to the conclusion that science needs new brake pads.

It's just plain wrong. Where it is right is only right because it has misappropriated moral truths that were already self evident.

That would be true for every system where if you disagree with it, you think that your view should be prioritised, and where you agree with it, you think that it's obvious and so you believe it's a case of plagiarism.

First, you are always prioritising your view over that of the system. So that implies you would only apply this to systems that you don't trust anyway. Therefore, it would make sense that you would take this approach to a system of morality that you reject, but to one that you would accept. Therefore, this is only true of the systems that each person would reject, which is subjective because they are different for different people.

So to a religious person, they would not take that attitude to their religion, and so the first part of your argument does not apply.

Secondly, most religions usually do credit the person with keeping religious precepts, and so the second part of your argument does not apply.

However, this DOES apply for cases when people are moral because they were going to be moral anyway and not just because someone added laws to try to take credit for their morality. So it DOES apply to a lot of secular laws and scientific theories that were novel in their time, but are things that people would now do and think anyway.

 

[Cognisant]

Scorpiomover I don't respect you, much less your opinion.

I would revise that:
While the reason people are moral or do good things isn't due to religion alone, and credit should go to people themselves over the religion they adopt, religion is simply a dedicated system of belief which exists to defend against some people's lack of inherently good nature, yet ends up sometimes getting in the way of people's inherently good nature and taking credit for them being good in order to further it's success as a religion.

But it doesn't, terrible things don't happen in spite of religion they happen because of religion, it is a delusion that does nothing but distract people from their true nature.

People are inherently good because the definition of good itself comes from people, it is not our humanity that makes us inhumane to one another but rather being led astray from it, we've all been brainwashed for so long that it's hard to see truth through the lies.

If religion was good you would expect the church to have some sanctity, that priests despite their flaws would at least try to be better, instead the church is awash with scandals like pedophilia, links to organized crime, hate-mongering and racism, how much shit does a hole need before you call it a cesspit?

Consider that religion cannot be suppressed by those who have embodied it as a part of their unconscious, subconscious, and/or conscious identity

True it's a slow process and it starts by dismantling the system they've built to brainwash people, by challenging the precedent. The concepts of sanctity and sin are nothing but brainwashing and the public must learn to recognize them as such. It must become the consensus that preaching to a child is abuse, that if someone believes in such nonsense they should keep it to themselves lest they be mocked and scorned and rightly so.

It is unfortunate, yes, but I'm not in the business of salvation, if someone chooses faith over reason they have only themselves to blame for the consequences that come of it.

I do see your point, sophists are people too and for them to be mocked and scorned for their beliefs is no less tragic than someone being mocked and scorned for their lack of belief, however try to see this relative to a larger timescale. A victory against sophism now is to prevent people ever becoming sophists again, oh sure there will be the odd screwball but that's nothing like institutionalized religion. It's a lot like disease, we live now in an time when many of the diseases that quite literally plagued humanity for millennia have been eradicated and if they do reoccur they are swiftly treated.

Religion is a disease of the mind, an infectious neurosis, it serves no more a purpose than measles or leprosy it's just that we have been forced to coexist with it for so long we've become resigned to it. No more! Let there soon come a day where children read about religion in the footnotes of their textbooks and laugh at how stupid the people of the past must have been, blissfully ignorant of the horrors that were.

 

[Tenacity]

The word "good" could be considered a religion in itself, no?

What is/are better alternative(s) to institutionalized religion?

If religion isn't dismissible from being embedded within people's identities in the current timeline of our lives, and we assume we can have influence on people to some extent, then what is/are better alternative(s)? Creating a new overarching system, which would then technically have the possibility of being considered "religion"?

A victory against sophism now is to prevent people ever becoming sophists again, oh sure there will be the odd screwball but that's nothing like institutionalized religion.

The inevitability of that one person who believes in sophism, outwardly or not, is enough to prevent the eradication of sophism at all. It's pointless to fight the proliferation of terminologies which are ever-changing, yet if you create a new doctrine for some new world order, the doctrine falls prey to the same problems.

Overriding the net "bad" effects of religion becomes much more difficult in practice. Surely Education was once the approach as to inspire critical thinking, but even that as a system is faulty and filled with the same problems as the church. 50% of the world are extraverts, and when we exist outside our safe-haven of the textualized internet, convenience of communication is crucial and prone to new iterations of connotations and associated meaning day by day.

You can infer that in those not good circumstances power was abused, yes, yet was it truly religion moreso than human nature that was at fault?

What about culture? How one was nutured or not nurtured?

Many other factors exist which makes eradication of religion and sophism highly impractical.

Every single person on this planet is entirely different, entirely unique, whether bound by religion or not. That's a variance of 7.53 billion people. That said, I do see that religion can sometimes enable justification for "bad" behavior by increasing the amount of temptation present due to restriction of certain activities, however, law does that very same thing, and of all we have is reformation of law, which can be misconstrued in and misinterpreted in the same way religion can be, and limited to those with certain privileges of acquiring law degrees, then we're back at square one.

 

[Kormak]

If religion isn't dismissible from being embedded within people's identities in the current timeline of our lives, and we assume we can have influence on people to some extent, then what is/are better alternative(s)? Creating a new overarching system, which would then technically have the possibility of being considered "religion"?

This already exists. A consensus shared by western universities, the media and virtually all western state institutions togetehr with business interests. Moldbug named it "The cathedral". It cannot be beaten and negociating with it makes one a useful tool while granting some minor and forgettable single cause "victory" against it.

If you disagree with the consensus, you are a heretic, labeled haterful among other things with the possibility of being completely ostracised from society.

Most people never become aware of this entity, because they grow up under it's shadow and follow it's teachings. A foreigner tho who's culture is alien to yours notices immediately.

You have alredy won. Why is it not to your liking tho? Cognisant seems to have some kind of beef with religion, but in the west he has won. Religion IS dying. The cathedral has replaced it since the 60s. How come you guys haven't noticed?

 

[Tenacity]

Interesting summary. I don't have anything against religion in itself - At least in America, consumerism could equally be considered "religion" if you will due to technological advancements. There are parts of it which we rely on, and while religion has permeated it, it relies on a set of resources, and even if religion has an effect, how would we know it had an effect as much as something non-religious, and how would we know whether it should be dismissed simply on the grounds of being ever so tinted with religious affiliation?

It's just value > cost. That's why we do or don't do things. That's why we accept or reject certain ideas over others.

Everything is everything as much as nothing is nothing and as much as nothingness is nothingness. If one realizes that we are all after the same things, then one can be equally against the "bad" effects of religion as the rest of humanity and as those who strongly affiliate with religion and as those who strongly are anti-religion or atheist. Those who have adopted power due to religion have the best capability to abuse that power in the same way anyone else with power via non-religious capabilities have the ability to abuse power. It's just a different set of methods / mechanisms.

Sheer existence doesn't always enable or guarantee efficacy or efficiency.

For example, the current and next generation of youth have new sets of problems, i.e. addiction to virality of (many times pointlessly) gratifying content, yet while that virality dumbs us down it also stands to empower us and enable us to live and feel connected with the world.

Many, many paradoxes exist in any influential system that cause the system to be broken, yet we don't even know what the real problems are. We try to propose solutions before even understanding problems, or even beginning to try to understand them. That is one of the most major problems with humanity. We don't know nearly as much as we think we do. It is unfortunate that taking away all the negative and positive connotations from words is an easy way to see with more objective clarity, yet is still prone to misconception. Yet, if we are to give up on language, and rely on communication through numbers for the rest of our lives, will that satisfy the multiple layers of our ego and beneath?

Information bias, privacy, limited worldviews, resource management, the list goes on... So many problems, so little time.

 

[Kormak]

Thats the most roundabout, complicated and long winded way I have seen anyone to date ... say very little of worth. Very ineficient use of words to get a point across.

 

[Tenacity]

Thats the most roundabout, complicated and long winded way I have seen anyone to date ... say very little of worth. Very ineficient use of words to get a point across.

Cool ad hominem. Where are you from?

Have you thought about the possibility that due to the fact that we live in completely different places, we have different worldviews worth questioning rather than arguing about things for the sake of it being fun to argue and assuming your thoughts are the only ones which are valid just because you have googled around a bit?

It's interesting also that you deem my response of little worth, after you had asked why things weren't to my liking and I answered at the macro level and at depth. Is there a better -response- rather than -reaction- you can come up with than essentially "let's just accept the status quo"?

Worth is subjective. If I was doing marketing, surely my conciseness would be ever more appeasing and immediately gratifying. But that creates lack of accuracy, another problem of spreading biased information synonymous with the effects of academia, religion, business, and media in the world, doesn't it?

If one wants to justify apathy for current conditions, then no one is going to stop them.

It seems that if you haven't tried to dissect what I'm saying, you're missing many points. I've over-digested your point.

 

[Kormak]

Cool ad hominem. Where are you from?

I made an observation. Didn't intend to offend sry. Transilvania Romania. I'm Hungarian however.

Have you thought about the possibility that due to the fact that we live in completely different places, we have different worldviews worth questioning rather than arguing about things for the sake of it being fun to argue and assuming your thoughts are the only ones which are valid just because you have googled around a bit?

I didn't say anything about your worldview. That would be valid even if we'd come from the same place, 2 ppl can interpret the same experience differently.

It's interesting also that you deem my response of little worth, after you had asked why things weren't to my liking and I answered at the macro level and at depth. Is there a better -response- rather than -reaction- you can come up with than essentially "let's just accept the status quo"?

So you can tone down the needless complexity. I see.

Worth is subjective. If I was doing marketing, surely my conciseness would be ever more appeasing and immediately gratifying. But that creates lack of accuracy, another problem of spreading biased information synonymous with the effects of academia, religion, business, and media in the world, doesn't it?

Everyone is biased, everyone has an agenda, even if it is subconscious. Accuracy comes superimposing perspectives to reveal the underlying skeletal structure. Holographical-Panoramic cognition is an INTP's specialty. Fear, closed-mindedness, an unwillingness to pursue and understand information that may be taboo is detrimental to the process. In the pursuit of knowledge freedom to gather data from everywhere is non-negociable. All angles must be examined. This is why given enough data INTPs get to the point fast and leave out the details as to how they got there.


"According to Aristotle, Holographic cognition corresponds to explanation by structural or formative causes. Aristotle called it the structure of form. Returning to the sculptor example, the cause of the sculpture is its latent form, which the sculptor merely sets free by cutting away excess marble." Source

If one wants to justify apathy for current conditions, then no one is going to stop them.

:P my apparent apathy is my attempt at taking on a "neutral stance" for the sake of conversation. Do I need to be clear about my position?

Ok, my position in all of this:

I prize freedom above anything else, it is sacred. I don't care what I have to do or say to get to the root of things, external rules and limitations are irrelevant. Without freedom to act, there is no path to truth and accuracy. I will read any material, become part of any group and explore anything I deem important enough regardless of it being off-limits or not, my only moral guide being my free will through reason and Kant's categorical imperative as my rule of thumb.

It seems that if you haven't tried to dissect what I'm saying, you're missing many points. I've over-digested your point.

The way you express yourself certainly doesn't help in this regard. I'm positive I'm not the first one who made this observation. Take it as constructive feedback. As per my observation, you seem to prefer: the Dialectical-Algorithmic Cognition of an INTJ

 

[Kormak]

Interesting summary. I don't have anything against religion in itself - At least in America, consumerism could equally be considered "religion" if you will due to technological advancements.

How are technological advancements related to consumerism? The noun consumerism refers to the theory that spending money and consuming goods is good for the economy. Consumerism can exist without technological advancements.

There are parts of it which we rely on, and while religion has permeated it, it relies on a set of resources, and even if religion has an effect, how would we know it had an effect as much as something non-religious, and how would we know whether it should be dismissed simply on the grounds of being ever so tinted with religious affiliation?

What parts are those that you rely on, ie what do you refer to there? Why would you dismiss it if it was tainted by religious affiliation? The questions here further complicate the matter without getting to the point. Convoluted sentence, rethorical?

It's just value > cost. That's why we do or don't do things. That's why we accept or reject certain ideas over others.

True.

Everything is everything as much as nothing is nothing and as much as nothingness is nothingness.

How is this even relevant or meaningful? Beats the hell out of me, I'm too dumb for this. Seems like fluff.

If one realizes that we are all after the same things, then one can be equally against the "bad" effects of religion as the rest of humanity and as those who strongly affiliate with religion and as those who strongly are anti-religion or atheist. Those who have adopted power due to religion have the best capability to abuse that power in the same way anyone else with power via non-religious capabilities have the ability to abuse power. It's just a different set of methods / mechanisms.

People obviously do not want the same things. I for example don't care about being happy, its not a goal, its unatainable because i'm human and have evolved reason. Yet many others seem to have this as a goal. many others would give up their freedom for some other goal, I would sacrifdice everything for my freedom. Obviously ppl don't agree on ends, don't agree on the means either.

Sheer existence doesn't always enable or guarantee efficacy or efficiency.

Fair point.

For example, the current and next generation of youth have new sets of problems, i.e. addiction to virality of (many times pointlessly) gratifying content, yet while that virality dumbs us down it also stands to empower us and enable us to live and feel connected with the world.

This has existed before. Case in point pop music. Its catchy, most ppl like it. It can be a vehicle for the cathedral to influence culture. It dumbes us down. Virality existed be4 the web (how ppl are), the web merely made the problem worse.

Many, many paradoxes exist in any influential system that cause the system to be broken, yet we don't even know what the real problems are. We try to propose solutions before even understanding problems, or even beginning to try to understand them. That is one of the most major problems with humanity.

Problems are relative and depend on one's end and perspective. They will forever exist, because they depend on the perciever(s).

We don't know nearly as much as we think we do. It is unfortunate that taking away all the negative and positive connotations from words is an easy way to see with more objective clarity, yet is still prone to misconception. Yet, if we are to give up on language, and rely on communication through numbers for the rest of our lives, will that satisfy the multiple layers of our ego and beneath?

Obviously not.

Information bias, privacy, limited worldviews, resource management, the list goes on... So many problems, so little time.

Relavant how? We have the rest of Eternity to figure it all out, unless we go extinct in the process ofc.

 

[Kormak]

But it doesn't, terrible things don't happen in spite of religion they happen because of religion, it is a delusion that does nothing but distract people from their true nature.

People are inherently good because the definition of good itself comes from people, it is not our humanity that makes us inhumane to one another but rather being led astray from it, we've all been brainwashed for so long that it's hard to see truth through the lies.

If religion was good you would expect the church to have some sanctity, that priests despite their flaws would at least try to be better, instead the church is awash with scandals like pedophilia, links to organized crime, hate-mongering and racism, how much shit does a hole need before you call it a cesspit?

\o/ back on topic.

I think most ppl have good intentions.. but.. rationalism and pragmatism are not the only things that drive human action. We are irrational creatures, slaves to our baser instincts, animals if you will. Read history, search your personal experiences. Your outburst against religion.. hatred lurks there.. I have seen it. Emotions make ppl unreasonable, unpredictable. Regardless what progress we have achieved, what social constructs we erect.. people at the core are irrational. If you are pushed far enough, you will prioritise emotion over logic, everyone does, regardless of what they logically stand to gain or lose. Some ppl are more defective than others, weaker or stronger, more or less in control of themselves. This breeds conflict and conflict inflicts loss. We see such loss as evil. An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

This was true before the church and it will continue to be true after it. If you take away guns, ppl will kill eachother with knives, if you take away knives they will stranagle eachother. If you eradicate religion ppl will find other excuses to justify their irrational actions.

You dismantle one system to create another. The root of the problem remains the individual.. the individual is the one who must assume responsability over his or her actions, even if those are irrational.

so I don't disagree, excuses should be done away with. Given free will, even if there would be a God. I would assert the same.

Being all dramatic about it:

e_e eh on that note tho, war is dysgenic, causes loss of resources and fuels the cycle of hatred. It sucks bu..bu.. fuck war. A nice kushy job somewhere safe ^^; freedom... thats the life.

 

[Cognisant]

If religion isn't dismissible from being embedded within people's identities in the current timeline of our lives, and we assume we can have influence on people to some extent, then what is/are better alternative(s)? Creating a new overarching system, which would then technically have the possibility of being considered "religion"?

Teaching people existentialism so they can think for themselves.

The inevitability of that one person who believes in sophism, outwardly or not, is enough to prevent the eradication of sophism at all. It's pointless to fight the proliferation of terminologies which are ever-changing, yet if you create a new doctrine for some new world order, the doctrine falls prey to the same problems.

Again teach people to think for themselves, then they don't need a doctrine.

Overriding the net "bad" effects of religion becomes much more difficult in practice. Surely Education was once the approach as to inspire critical thinking, but even that as a system is faulty and filled with the same problems as the church. 50% of the world are extraverts, and when we exist outside our safe-haven of the textualized internet, convenience of communication is crucial and prone to new iterations of connotations and associated meaning day by day.

The under-funding of education is in part due to religion (can't have those damn kids knowing things and questioning what they're told) and in larger part due to the failings of democracy which is another giant that needs slaying.

You can infer that in those not good circumstances power was abused, yes, yet was it truly religion moreso than human nature that was at fault?

You blame people's humanity for inhumanity?
Just as religion misappropriates people's good deeds for itself so too does it unjustly blame them for its own faults.

What about culture? How one was nutured or not nurtured?

We have never known a culture free of religion's influence.

Every single person on this planet is entirely different, entirely unique, whether bound by religion or not. That's a variance of 7.53 billion people. That said, I do see that religion can sometimes enable justification for "bad" behavior by increasing the amount of temptation present due to restriction of certain activities, however, law does that very same thing, and of all we have is reformation of law, which can be misconstrued in and misinterpreted in the same way religion can be, and limited to those with certain privileges of acquiring law degrees, then we're back at square one.

The philosophical underpinnings of law aren't based on nonsense and lies, it's true that the law isn't the same as what's moral (a point I made earlier) and miscarriages of justice do occur however there are very clever people who work very hard on trying to make the system better every day.

Go talk to a lawyer, you'll find their perspectives and frustrations quite edifying.