----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Glendinning" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] The Moral Landscape
Hi Platt, you said
"[Emergence] only describes what happened".
Which is good surely, ie it's honest and empirical ?
Any explanation that doesn't would therefore be dishonest.
Ian
Hi Ian,
But it doesn't explain anything. Isn't that what science is supposed to do?
Platt
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:45 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Mark,
Well said. Science constantly ascribes the creation of new patterns to
"emergence" which doesn't explain anything. It only describes what
happened.
Best,
Platt
On 19 Oct 2010 at 22:14, 118 wrote:
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Steven Peterson
<[email protected]>wrote:
Hi Mark,
>> Steve:
>> This is a typical Platteral shift. The question was not about whether
>> religions have any true moral beliefs. Of course they do, and since
>> religions contradict one another's moral teachings they also obviously
>> have a lot of false moral beliefs. If there are any people of faith
>> who are not deceived (if one religion actually is true), then there
>> are certainly millions who are deceived.
>>
>
> Mark:
> Steve, I think you are confusing truth with belief. I believe I like
> pistachios, that does not make it true. It is only true that I believe
> that. All religions are true in that sense. The deception is realized
when
> one changes his/her mind, it does not exist before that.
Steve:
I understand completely that believing something is not the same as it
being true. But in your odd example, I can't see how you could believe
that you like pistachios when you don't really like them.
Steve:
>> The question is what is the basis for moral truth? Is it (1) the
>> authority of prophets and clerics? Or is it (2) the fact that some
>> things are better than others and therefore the distinction between
>> good and bad is open to rational inquiry?
> Mark:
> Yes Steve, that is the question, but you are missing a few choices in
> the
> multiple choice question. If I had to choose from the above I would say
> number 1. The so called authority of prophets and the resulting clerics
is
> arrived at through rational inquiry, it is not just made up out of
nothing.
> They are directly addressing the question of moral truth, so the
underlying
> premise to their answers provides more basis.
Steve:
Such authorities generally conflate morality with "the will of God"
and claim special divine revellation rather than a reasoned argument
in support of their "moral" pronouncements. They speak on God's behalf
about how to please God rather than speaking on the topic of how to
maximize human well-being.
Mark:
OK Steve, instead of saying "the will of God" I were to say: "the will of
the primary physical forces which have expressed themselves through a big
bang, and, coupled with random chance make this anthopocentric universe
possible", would that be more acceptable? It sure has a lot more words,
but
it still doesn't explain a thing. Or perhaps I could say that by "the will
of the evolutionary process, which selects in favor of those of the
species
which collect in groups and express moral tendencies, as demonstrated
though
an analysis of bones through the ages". Is that better? No matter what one
says it is the will of, it is simply a description, not a truth. I can
think of a hundred ways to describe our moral behavior, this doesn't mean
that I understand it, it just means I have strung a bunch of words
together
and by virtue of them supporting each other I have created one big God.
It is clear that we simply aren't talking about the same thing when we
use the word "morality." I doesn't look to me as though you could
possibly contribute anything to a discussion of morality (any one that
I am interested in) if you don't see morality as being concerned with
conscious experience but rather as whatever a given ecclesiastical
authority decides God wills.
Let me say, that I follow no-one. My conscious experience dictates all. I
derive things empirically through experience. I am not one of those
theists
that believes everything the physics textbooks tells me, nor am I an
agnostic waiting to really see the electron before I believe in it, nor am
I an atheist that needs to deny some phantom, that I have created, in
order
to justify my behavior. So you may be right if a discussion on morality
means creating a moral system scientifically and then forcing it on
people,
we have nothing to discuss. The whole concept of defining morality in such
a way smacks of a highly dogmatic Religion which will be forcing us wear
burkas because it has been scientifically proven to be highly moral. Such
an encapsulation of morals is not only dangerous, it is immoral.
Cheers,
Mark
Best,
Steve
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