I think that part of the reason that people fight for the idea of a “great universal umpire/score keeper” is that it relieves one of the responsibility that goes with choice. There is a freedom from existential dread that comes with assigning the responsibility for moral reasoning to an external authority. But, I think that it’s only through taking responsibility for those choices that live authentically and make progress, both culturally and individually, toward a more humane existence.

You touched on a few things that we could talk about extensively. I’ve been wicked busy lately, but I want to keep the ball rolling and give you a response.

The issues you brought up, as I seem them, are:

Is there such a thing as a moral imperative if there isn’t a God?
In a naturalistic universe, is there free will?
What is the nature of consciousness?

Whew. That’s a lot. I gave a response to the first question as a response to JD’s post. Can we continue the discussion there?

As to Miessler’s assertions, I think I’m pretty much in agreement. I’d disagree with the statement that Heroes deserve no praise, and criminals deserve no punishment. I think that’s kind of a knee-jerk reaction to questioning objective morality. After all, we can say that the heroes in Greek mythology were heroes, but, in our society they might be considered evil. One man’s hero is another man’s villain. That doesn’t make it meaningless. Does something have to be considered true by everyone for it to have meaning? I’m not talking about whether or not it is “true.” But, whether it has meaning. I heard someone once describe meaning as either raining down on us or bubbling up. For theists, meaning rains down from heaven. For non-believers, meaning is something that bubbles up from the earth; our own creation.

As for consciousness (the fizzy-bottle idea) – wow, that’s a huge topic. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this recently, as I’m doing an independent study on the philosophy of psychoanalysis. One idea that I think is interesting is the irreducibility of consciousness due to fantasy. Even you are able to take a phenomenological approach to consciousness I think you still run into the issue of the internal psychic life. Fantasy has almost as strong a sway in creating identity as exposure to external phenomena.

Finally, as to whether or not the appeal to consequences is wrong… now, that’s an interesting and difficult thing. It boils down to the Matrix. Red pill, blue pill. If you can sit an enjoy a steak in the Matrix does it really matter? Honestly, I still don’t know. My impulse is to say that it matters more than anything else. But, I can understand that steak is really, really good. Maybe, though, the choice isn’t between steak and gruel, but between steak that’s handed to you and steak you have to work for and which, ultimately, may be more satisfying. Because now you’re a rancher!!! Does that make sense? I like to bring in cattle-rearing wherever I can.

This is not a coherent post. But, I wanted to throw out a few ideas… where should we go next?

How many ties have any of us thought the following: “Dude, don’t be an A-hole!”

So on the one hand when I am not an A-hole I am happier and when I am not an A-hole people around me are happier. Not really sure we need some kind of deep philosophy or belief in God to counter the argument that self interested people would behave badly if there were no utopian guiding principle keeping ua all in line.

At the same time, societies recognizing the destructive effects of the human impulse to do bad stuff to each other and it clearly serves everyone’s interest to establish enforceable guidelines. I think there is no need to re-litigate teh issue of why social Darwinism is/was a completely intellectually bankrupt idea.

Your question is a very good one, though. Why should I be “good”. Of course what is “good” is largely determined by the culture I’m in. So, why should I be good within my culture. If I’m thinking of it in an entirely selfish way, I think that there are consequences for not being good. I will have a less fulfilled and happy life if I’m not kind to people. There are also well documented physiological and psychological benefits to being kind to other people. The very fabric of our psyche is relational and we’re happiest when our relationships are functioning well. It makes my life better to make other people’s lives better. And people working together is definitely good for society as a whole. We didn’t get to be top dog on the evolutionary pile by being the strongest. A large part of our success has been to be able to cooperate with each other.

There is the question of, well, if I had a lot of power and could have people who loved me because I rewarded them, personally, why shouldn’t I go maim and kill? Or, why should I care at all about future generations? That’s hard. And, I think that’s why, for example, even people who consider themselves very moral have a hard time doing much about the environment – the pain of not being kind and generous is less tangible. So, the question is, do we have a responsibility to figure out what is “good” and try to do it if there isn’t any cosmic cop who is telling us what to do and who is going to judge us at the end of it all? (As an aside, I think that Evangelical Christians have some of the same struggles. Consider that justification is at the time of salvation. The question is often, well, if I know I’m going to Heaven, then what is my motivation for continuing to do good?)

Ultimately, I’m not sure that there is such a thing as a categorical imperative. There isn’t any abstract “good” THING existing metaphysically outside of us, any abstract notion of what is “good.” It is defined by us, just as language is defined by us. We could choose to stop being moral and the universe would continue on. We could also choose to stop speaking, stop using language. Showing that a world can exist without something doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t exist. Morality isn’t necessary, but then again, neither is the existence of humanity. But, we exist and we can observe that there are actions that we make moral judgments about. The nature of those actions and the validity of our moral judgments are, I think, something worth spending a lot of time thinking about and discussing.

I think that part of the reason that people fight for the idea of a “great universal umpire/score keeper” is that it relieves one of the responsibility that goes with choice. There is a freedom from existential dread that comes with assigning the responsibility for moral reasoning to an external authority. But, I think that it’s only through taking responsibility for those choices that live authentically and make progress, both culturally and individually, toward a more humane existence.

If we take Wittgenstein’s arguments on how language and philosophy work (from the Investigations) we see an explanation of language as essentially culturally agreed upon rule following. It works because we have all agreed on the rules. At the same time, those rules are allowed to evolve. We judge from context and other clues and signals what another person means by the things they say and we adapt our understanding of the rules accordingly.

Morality works in much the same way. We can easily see fairly radical differences in moral belief structures both over time and between cultures. In one culture non-marital sex may not be seen as immoral while in another culture non-marital sex is so immoral as to justify the murder of the offending party: an act which many cultures would see as immoral in the extreme. As often as appeals to God are used as a bulwark for moral behavior they are used to justify behaviors that would seem utterly unjustifiable.

The idea then of Objective Morality cannot be seen as a knowable thing if it in fact exists at all. Rather, as moral actors we work toward understanding what morality is or should be and we do that in concert with one another.

The idea that god serves as the great motivator for moral action seems to boil down to this: I understand what is right and wrong. I believe that if I do right I will be rewarded and if I do wrong I will be punished. I know that there are many times when doing right will obviously lead to bad consequences for me so the reward must be coming later probably after I am dead and will be bestowed upon me some great universal umpire/score keeper. Similarly, there are times when I have the opportunity to do wrong and I know no one is watching so in order to not do wrong I need to believe that the great umpire/score keeper is watching and will punish me if I do wrong. This has always struck me as the moral reasoning of a fourth grader.

It’s late and these thoughts are related but somewhat disjointed and for that I apologize.

So let’s take out the consequence; let’s restructure the argument altogether.

It’s recognized as absurd to argue that atheists are horrible and immoral people just because they are atheists; I know the opposite to frequently be true. However, I’ve yet to see much interaction over the point of why we ought not to be horrible and immoral. What impetus is there for me to reward or punish anything? I don’t think I’m stretching here with this line of questioning and since I’m just asking a question, I’m not appealing to any consequence of the answer.

Consider Daniel Miessler:

1. There is no free will, as the seemingly complex goings-on of our lives are little more than pseudo-deterministic patterns being woven into time.
2. There is, therefore, no objective good and evil. Heroes deserve no praise, and criminals deserve no punishment.
3. Any meaning we create in life is just that–created. Meaning is not native to our material world; it must be conjured and subscribed to in order for it to take shape.
4. The subsequent embrace of our manifested meaning is a willful engagement in delusion, and this engagement is necessary only due to the frailty of our human psyche.

(http://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-highest-stage-of-human-awareness)

Is Miessler incorrect in his conclusion that even rational discourse is comparatively similar to shaking two bottles of coke and seeing which fizzes more? ( “Our brains are nothing but a collection of chemicals sloshing back and forth.” – http://tinyurl.com/yhyjopt) Or that since the world unfolds according to the dynamics of a nearly infinite number of variables interacting with each other, there is nothing that cannot be predicted if all the variables are known? (ibid.) According to consistent naturalism?

It would seem that there’s some argumentation from evidence and the logical end (predictable, of course, both rationally and empirically) of the stance of a pure naturalism.

Sure, there are plenty who’ll say “I don’t like this so I won’t believe it”, but that hasn’t been said here. And while I may end up on paper with the same conclusions as those who approach it from that perspective, even you admit that you don’t always care for the methodology of those you agree with.

I’m proposing the acceptance that, from a naturalistic perspective, there is no ultimate reason for why we have a problem with an appeal to consequence in the first place, but I’d love to read your interaction with Miessler if you find him to be flawed.