From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 08:41:56 MST
Jef Allbright wrote:
> Brett Paatsch wrote:
> > Dostoyevski said "if God is dead than everything is permitted".
> >
> > Bertrand Russell was apparently quite frustrated - (History of Western
> > Philosophy) that he could find no greater basis for saying what the
> > Nazi's did was "wrong" than that he personally did not like it. As I
> > understood he was arguing that "values" were a matter of taste. I
> > think he would have liked to have been able to show that their
> > actions had arisen as a result of logical error, but their value
> > system, however obnoxious he found it was not apparently illogical
> > per se. So far as I am aware no one has ever succeeded in finding a
> > _logical_ basis for arguing that something is inherently right or
> > inherently wrong.
> >
> > To try and ground ethics on rationality alone may be akin to
> > searching for the perpetual motion machine, but maybe a more
> > "universal" ethical system can be grounded on rationality plus some
> > fundemental human traits like sociability. I don't know whether this
> > later goal is also impossible or just extremely difficult.
>
> The search for a rational basis for morals is just one more example of
where
> a frustrating conundrum at one level of context is a non-issue at a higher
> level. Moral questions are always set in the context of human values. At
a
> higher level, the universe simply doesn't care. As long as a moral
argument
> meets the needs of the current values of the society judging it, it is
> considered correct. It doesn't even need to be logically consistent.
> Later, as society's values change, the old moral "absolutes" will be
> replaced with newer moral "absolutes".
True, but the world contains more than one society at present. Ultimately
does might make right and is it then for the mighty to label all opponents
as "evil"? Clearly this is not just a hypothetic thing. It resonates today,
as I suspect it always has in real world struggles and real world politics.
>
> Attempts in the past to create a scientific, rational moral code were
based
> on observations of nature, such as "survival of the fittest", which in a
> sense may be the ultimate natural law, no matter what rules we may make.
> However this conflicts with (ironically) our evolutionary programming to
be
> compassionate. Other attempts such as "the greatest good for the greatest
> number" also fall apart because the the determination of what is "good"
> comes down to human values. Another idea is to always rule in favor of
the
> more "evolved" position. This was probably the most interesting idea I
> gained from reading _Lila_, Robert Persig's sequel to _Zen and the Art of
> Motorcycle Maintenance_, however this has the result of putting the needs
of
> organized groups ahead of the needs of individuals, and it's easy to come
up
> with counterexamples showing that this can be very dangerous in practice.
> Another scientificly based moral guide may be to always rule in favor of
> maximum extropy, but you can easily, and fataly find yourself suffering in
a
> local minimum along the way to this goal.
>
> The best we can do is a short term approximation of "good", in accord with
> current local social norms, and nature will take care of the rest in it's
> inexorable extropic way.
>
We get to the long term through a series of short intervals. If the best we
can do is all set our standards of good to the current social norms then
wouldn't all attempts to _change_ those norms be "not good" or evil? If so,
this seems unsatisfactory. Also, aren't we a part of nature? If you, or I,
or we, decide, or our society decides, to let "nature take care of the rest"
and we feel that we don't know what the good is then other groups of humans,
other societies, that don't include us may come to regard us with the same
"detachment" as we regard chimps.
Going boldly forward into the future feeling that ultimately there is no
right or wrong that all the boundaries of our in-groups and out-groups are
arbitrary seems a tad sterile. If a better basis for right and wrong is
determinable and determined by a social group that we aren't part of, that
group (or society) may have better coherence and may (even by our standard!)
be justified in leaving us behind or pushing us aside. Its only "natural".
I don't know how but I suspect we are going to have to do better than this.
Brett
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