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I do not disagree that a society collectively decides what is or is not morally acceptable. But at the same time, each individual decides whether to accept or reject what morals that particular society have adopted. This is quite obvious. In the United States, it has been determined that murder is not acceptable, yet, many persons decide to murder anyways. But, if one believes that morals are solely society based, and not ultimately derived from One transcendent Source, than morals are really only "preferences." And since preferences are subjective, that means, there is no ultimate right or wrong. And if there is no ultimate right and wrong, if I were to steal your car or clear out your bank account, you could not say that that action was wrong. You could say you did not like it and that the society you live in has deemed such an activity as being wrong and illegal, but, since I live in another place in the world where stealing is considered noble, the act of stealing, could not be classified as being objectively wrong.
Yeah, but most people can agree that causing harm to other individuals (which stealing is), then that is wrong. That's what the definition of wrong means. Most people would agree that you shouldn't do things to other without permission. Also, in the example you gave, if a society were to think it noble to steal or to steal from others, then usually, that society has rules in place that prevents people from stealing their own kind (since obviously people stealing from each other wouldn't really work), but also such a society, if found out by others would be destroyed by others. Meaning, the neighboring tribe finds out that the code of this tribe is to steal from others, which means they'll destroy that culture and that culture won't exist. Most societies have done this which is why most societies today usually have many similar moral attitudes, like that stealing is bad.
The other thing is that in the long run, there are advantages to being honest and not stealing. When, you are honest for example, and have a society or family with honest people, there are benefits, because the people who are honest are more hard-working and are willing to get things done and control themselves and in the end everyone benefits from this. One of the reasons why objectively you can say stealing is wrong, is because it's not sustainable. An entire society can do it. It also causes harms to others, which is where the dictionary definition of something being wrong comes from.
You seem to be coming from a place where, if there is no greater law, than why follow things? To which I would say that not everyone feels that way. Some people do good, even if there were no laws. Some people want to work honestly and don't want to take, even if they are hungry or really want something. Some people work and work for free with no rewards. Those are the kinds of people and behaviors society tries to promote and those are the kinds of people and behavior that ultimately make things happen. The point is that thieves and people who do bad are not sustainable and eventually self-implode and are too selfish to continue a family, society, etc. In other words, you need good people to keep things going. You need honest people to promote a society. Some people like being good, just because that's what they like, even if there's no reward to be gained. You seem to find that a hard concept to grasp.
Last edited by clearlevel; 04-16-2017 at 06:10 PM..
I've always found the prospect of eternal death to be liberating, motivating, and morally reinforcing insofar as my time on this planet is concerned. In contrast, the three major Monotheistic religions contend -- in the absence of good evidence -- that death is an illusion and the only thing to fear is what awaits the end of your corporeal existence absent the voluntary surrender or your critical faculties beforehand.
The main curative is to get over yourself and quit demanding that reality be your personal ego-inflated heroic narrative with you as its star.
Exactly right. But how do you do that? I've been the center of my own universe for 53 years. It's difficult to imagine a universe without me in it. That's what scares me. Don't you think we're all kind of programmed that way? What with the survival instinct and all?
I get what you're saying...I think it comes down to ego...and letting go of ego, in as much as that's possible.
And, as a previous poster noted, in death there will be no beer. And that really, really sucks. Because I really like beer.
I've been the center of my own universe for 53 years. It's difficult to imagine a universe without me in it. That's what scares me. Don't you think we're all kind of programmed that way? What with the survival instinct and all?
Actually, I don't feel any fear about eternal oblivion. Thinking about the dying process worries me a bit - I can think of some really horrible ways to die - but being dead does not worry me at all. I basically "die" every night in dreamless sleep. No big deal.
But a funny thing has happened over the past few years. I have gradually come to believe that I probably won't be unconscious for eternity. This is not for any religious reasons but, rather, for a combination of scientific and philosophical reasons. I now think that I the physical death of this body is probably not going to be the end of my experience. I've was recently explaining my reasons in a different thread (this thread in the Religion and Spirituality forum: Scientist Claims That Consciousness Continues After Death – Life Is Just The Beginning. ), so I can just repeat a few things I said there.
Although I am a physicalist and an atheist/agnostic, and even though I do not think that anything like a "soul" will float out of my body when I die, I still, nevertheless, strongly suspect that the death of my body probably won't be the end of my conscious experience. Let's see if I can summarize my reasons in a concise format:
(1) Holism: This is essentially a roughly Buddhist-style belief in the interdependence of all things, such that there are no ontologically isolated entities. For the present purposes, my spin on this is the idea that the "Experiencer" in each and every moment of experience is Reality Itself. Individual moments of experience are epistemologically isolated in the sense that each moment of Reality is unique (ontologically non-sharable and non-repeatable), but nevertheless also epistemologically unified (and ontologically unified) in the sense that qualitative experiences are functional processes, and functions/processes are types of things that can be shared and/or repeated.
(2) Reality is FAPP infinite. For my purposes, this FAPP infinity needs to be true of any one or more of the following: (a) temporal extension (b) spatial extension (c) multiverse instantiations. Any one of these FAPP infinities would be sufficient for my purposes, but I suspect that all three are probably true.
(3) A moment of conscious experience is a finite process. A quale is a finite physical processes, and a moment of conscious experience is a finite system of qualia. Along these lines, a qualitative life-history is also a finite system.
From (2) and (3) we get the statistical probability that any given series of conscious moments, including the series of conscious moments that constitute my current life history, could be repeated. I do not personally believe that pure randomness is the operative dynamic of Reality, but even if it were, the string of qualia constituting my life history would probably still get repeated. I believe, however, that patterns of qualia are constrained by something like "reasons" or chaotic attractors, etc., so, as I see it, pure randomness plays a relatively minor role. If this is true, then these extra constraints on possible physical state-space configurations dramatically increase the probabilities of my life history of experiences being repeated. (Smaller finite patterns are more likely to be repeated in FAPP infinity than larger finite patterns.)
From (1) we can conclude that if the sequence of experiences constituting my life history ever do get repeated, for any reason, then "I" will "be there" in exactly the same sense that "I" will "be there" when I wake up tomorrow because the "I" in every instance of experience is always the one and same "I" - namely Reality Itself, contextually shaped by memories of a life history. Any physical system that shares my memories is "me".
Since I don't believe in a God who can guarantee that my eternal experiences will be happy - i.e., in "heaven" - I don't find the thought of eternal experience to be necessarily comforting. But, for better or worse, experience could turn out to be virtually unavoidable.
Yes, I agree, death is eternal. But I imagine it will be like not waking up after falling asleep. Shakespeare wrote, "To sleep. Perchance to dream."
Don't find that frightening...I like sleeping. I like dreaming.
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What scares me about death is that it's eternal.
