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Originally posted by Moral Hazard I'm going to ignore your diatribe on the 3rd commandment as it is a religious law rather then a moral and muddies the water with regard to the orginal question posed. So you're position is that morals are a natural consequence of social order, correct? I reject this position because if it were true then morality would have to be dependent on the society from which it was developed. Again, this would means that morality is situational and not universal, therefore it is not absolute and by definition the rules of conduct you see as morality is really just ethics.

The religious stuff wasn't meant to muddy it was meant to illustrate a parallel construct. I'll use a different parallel construct to illustrate


Bob the hunter kills a bear. This is an extremely rare occurrence in the clan so everyone talks about it a lot around the campfire. Some years later a new generation is now around the campfire, and Bob's exploits are told again.

This time the storyteller changes the bear into "The Beast" in order to entertain the children. They hide behind their mothers arms as The Storyteller tromps around the fire pretending to be The Beast. Not surprisingly not a single person interrupts the story to say, "Santa Claus doesn't exist, the Beast is really just a Bear".

A few generations go by, and no one is alive who remembers that The Beast was ever a Bear. The Beast is now fact in the lore of the clan.


Is the following evolution of a story reasonable? Well I know 2 things about bears. The first is that they hibernate. The second is that Mother bears are infamous in the animal world for protecting their young. I also know that the thing that is scarier than Grendel... is Grendel's mother. I could spin you up a pantheon using this process with ease.

Or in its simplest incarnation. The Behaviour of 'goblins' and 'pixies' in a house, sound identical to The Behaviour of a raccoon at a campsite. They can't get into houses physically, but their story makes the transition easily.


To bring that back to your distinction between Ethics and Morality, all I am doing is arguing for the same transformation. The question of vegetarianism is an ethical debate today. In a thousand years it could easily be a question of morality if the ethical debate has become static against eating meat. In the same way, as the bear to beast transformation forgets its roots, I'm arguing that Morality is just a collection of ethical questions which were solved in the past.

And I'd add that since they are often attributed as being linked to some 'divine' truth that this attribution's basis could be reasonably traced to the desire to cement them as being static. Since they have been uploaded into the realm of the divine there is no reason to question their validity, hence they are cemented.

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Last edited by Subey on Sep-07-2007 at 16:03

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard I cannot believe in an absolute good being something that is understandable by humans. This is not to say that absolute good does not exist, rather that we cannot understand it. How could we as humans ever hope to understand anything that is absolute being as we have no frame of referrence for such a thing? Everything in human existance is finite and subjective; the absolute, eternal, objective, it is all beyond us. The best we could ever actually hope for is to come to some sort of peace with these concepts. Morality and moral codes are derivatives of what we perceive to be absolute good... perception is not reality. PKC, your assertion that absolute good/evil/right/wrong must exist if there is a divine creator is contingent on that divine creator being absolute good/evil/right/wrong. Even if one accepts that there is a god I don't think one can confidently state that god is any of those things. Good, Evil, Right, Wrong, those are ideas that humans have created based on our understanding of existance... if there is a god it would not be limited in it's understanding of existance thus these ideas would not apply. The reason questions of morality, right, wrong, good, evil, have been examined, re-examined, debated, studied for the whole of human existance with no firm resolution is because such a resolution is simply beyond us. This is why I will hold to the position that morality simply cannot exist in man as an objective code... it has to be individual and subjective... which is not morality at all. All the moral codes that have developed and are held out as standards, as truth, are really just attempts to temper the individual, to control others. Believe me, it actually pains me to hold this believe as it is at odds with my religious convictions, however, using reason I can come to no other conclusions.

But there has to be some sort of corelation between human understanding of good and absolute good? Even if human has to infer some sort of understanding of absolute good from human experiences of good?

Even when you say that humans have no idea what an absolute good is, you make it sound like absolute good is very much alien from human concept of good such as helping an injured man.

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Originally posted by chinamon not true. i say "ugh" but i am a tranny.

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Originally posted by kotsy lol colour me retarded

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Originally posted by EvilTree But there has to be some sort of corelation between human understanding of good and absolute good? Even if human has to infer some sort of understanding of absolute good from human experiences of good? Even when you say that humans have no idea what an absolute good is, you make it sound like absolute good is very much alien from human concept of good such as helping an injured man.

We presume there is a corolation, we cannot know. It could be that if there is an absolute good our idea of what that is may be dead on, however, it's unlikely. We are limited creatures, we can only understand things within our limits. Anything absolute is outside of our comprehension, thinking that it is not is the height of arrogance. The long and short of it is as follows.... human morality cannot be true as it professes to be absolute and objective whereas we are incapable of understanding that which is absolute and objective.

BTW, is it good to help an injured man if doing so only prologs suffering? If your assistance will allow the man 5 minutes of additional life consumed by incomperable pain... was your assistance a moral act... was it good... was it virtuous even?

I'm not sure what "absolute good" would be.

Don't good things have to be good for something or someone in order to be good?

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Originally posted by Subey To clarify then, I'd argue that the concept of a static or concrete set of morals are just an evolved form of social order. A rule that has been tested and proven as beneficial so much that it can be set in stone. And as such then becomes part of a subset of 'human pack rules' labeled morals.

I agree. Before man could comprehend his existence past the end of a stick he became well aware that it will be easier if he worked in a group to find food, survive against predators, etc. If mankind lived in a dog-eat-dog/every-man-for-himself world (although technically speaking the world still works this way, just not in the primitive sense) we obviously wouldn't have societies or economies. Before we could even ask, "why are we here" we had to live by a set of morals, at least loosely, in order to survive and fulfill life's most basic goal. We had to be able to reach peaceful resolution long before more advanced intelligence, let alone religion.

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Originally posted by D-res Before we could even ask, "why are we here" we had to live by a set of morals, at least loosely, in order to survive and fulfill life's most basic goal. We had to be able to reach peaceful resolution long before more advanced intelligence, let alone religion.

You're confusing code of conduct with morals. We developed rules of conduct, laws, manners, etc. to govern social arrangements... morals are different and not necessarally consistant with survival.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I'm not sure what "absolute good" would be. Don't good things have to be good for something or someone in order to be good?

Being good for something or someone would be a subjective good - something that is considered to be a good given a specific set of consequences. An absolute good is objective... it is a good in and of itself, in all instances, regardless of circumstance.

I think the summary is this.

There is nothing as good or bad in the universe.

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard Being good for something or someone would be a subjective good - something that is considered to be a good given a specific set of consequences. An absolute good is objective... it is a good in and of itself, in all instances, regardless of circumstance.

But there can be good and bad consequences for any seemingly "good" act. I agree that if there is absolute good it's way over everyone's head and we can't possibly understand its motive, or lack thereof, but as far as I can possibly comprehend, there is no absolute good that I can imagine.

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard An absolute good is objective... it is a good in and of itself, in all instances, regardless of circumstance.

Okay. That makes no sense.

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Originally posted by lücid

What the hell am I doing in marketing??? I wish I had courses like this.

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Originally posted by EvilTree Even when you say that humans have no idea what an absolute good is, you make it sound like absolute good is very much alien from human concept of good such as helping an injured man.

A wolf helps members of its pack, and it eats things outside its pack (i.e. rabbits). It has no concept of good or evil.

A guy is walking his dog in the park, and a car crashes into a river near by. He rushes to save the occupants of the car, and later is honoured as a hero. Everyone thinks he is a 'good' person. This same guy works at a factory that refines plutonium for atomic weapons which are designed to kill people outside of his pack's defined territory.

My point being, that if 'good' was a real thing in humans then it wouldn't be directed primarily towards those that fall under the umbrella of your local flag. And inverted towards those who face a different flag.



Hence during the cold war, the Russians were generally referred as being, 'The Evil Empire', and now we have the 'Axis of Evil'.

and

"Mexicans are taking our jobs", because obviously people in that Pack don't deserve jobs, only people in your own pack.

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Last edited by Subey on Sep-07-2007 at 22:17