Phloydrix' Stoned Ramblings for Tonight...

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by Phloydrix, Dec 29, 2007.

  1. There is no such thing as morality. It is a ficticious concept invented by our brains, and we are slave to it. What does the universe know of morality? It knows nothing about morality. It knows only of events occuring in time. No emotions, no feelings, just cold continuous atom dispersing and the laws of science.
     

  2. Being a slave means we have not freed ourselves from it yet, I take it?
     
  3. We can't free ourselves from it.
     
  4. Two examples to argue the case for no morality:
    There are cases where conflicting moralities are both justified, yet if morality exists it must be objective, which can't be the case if two conflicting moralities are both correct. The prime example of this is when an animal kills another to survive. The killer is justified in his actions by every beings inherent Right of Survival, and the slain animal had just as much a right to fight back against his predator. So the action of killing the animal was both morally correct and morally wrong at the same time, there is no objective morality in this scenario and if it's subjective then it must not exist at all.

    The other example is just to look at the Arabic world. People in places like Saudi Arabia are just as convinced, if not more so than us about the truth of their morality. The idea of treating women equally, of course not. It's taken as an axiom. Not being a muslim? Punishable by death, of course. That is a fair punishment under their morality. Can you imagine believing so strongly in a cause. They approach the issue of morality from a completely different angle, no way we could even think of addressing morality in a way similar to them because they're looking at it under a completely different set of axioms. Who are we to truly judge their moral system as incorrect and our own as correct.
     

  5. Can you prove that this is the single Truth?
     

  6. No, and my point is not about enlightenment or Buddha, it is completely athiestic in nature.
     

  7. Wouldn't you rather it be Universal?
     
  8. How do you mean?
     
  9. Morals are completely subjective, there are no true set rules for existance.

    Many of the morals that we hold dear in our modern society are baggage of the older societies we developed from. For example we know the pain that we feel when someone close to us dies, with empathy we understand that we do not want to cause others that pain. This is why we don't take kindly to murder.

    Or incest, it is considered bad because when there were no contraceptives, and two cousins did it, they were likley to end up with a child with poor genetics. This was harmful to the society and it was made against the law, and a social no no. That idea was passed down through societies and we hold that as a moral belief even today.
     
  10. If morals are subjective, then they don't exist in the universe, only in our heads.
     
  11. Correct.
     
  12. Which would mean that there's no reason to act morally if doing so would conflict with any self-serving motives. The only reason morality exists is to propogate the species, so any set of morals which do this successfully can be considered good.
     
  13. How is it that morality is fictitious, yet we are a slave to it?
     
  14. There's nothing contradictory about that. Many people are slaves to their beliefs, even if they are not grounded in reality.
     
  15. there is no such thing as 'absolute' morality, however theres no need to say morality doesnt exist
    and humans arent the only animals that exhibit morality, certin apes will punish a member ofa group for eating excss amounts of food, many animals will forfeit some of their food if another member didnt catch any.

    so it seems tht some level of morality exists in nature

    Of course the universe doesnt know about morality as it doesnt know about anything that 'the mind' makes up

    I dont follow why something must be objective for it to exist
     

  16. But the result of these types of moral behaviors is the propogation of the species, that's what it all amounts to. That's what any good morality comes down to.


    What meaning does it have if it's subjective? If I can point to something and say its wrong and you can point to that same thing and say it's right, and we're both correct since it's completely subjective, then why even bother trying to distinguish it as such in the first place if any moral judgement of it would be correct?
     

  17. Wouldn't you say caring about the propagation of the human species for the sake of itself is pretty subjective?
     

  18. I don't think so... I think even objectively, the single true goal of every species is to continue its existence. Unlike morality itself, that is something the universe knows. Existence is a series of events, and the universe knows events.
     

  19. lol Yes, I find it amusing that you assume that the Universe wishes to keep all species alive. Certain species clearly become extinct. Certainly this happens for a reason, wouldn't you think?
     
  20. I didn't say it was the goal of the universe to keep a species alive, I said it is the goal of any given species to keep itself alive. The universe doesn't recognize this as a goal, but it recognizes the act of continued survival for a species because the tangible result is more creatures of the species.

    The reason species become extinct is because they are not the best equipped to obtain the resources they need to survive.
     

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