A Secular Basis for Morality?
I've discussed at length my religious views in the past on Ricochet. To sum it up, I'm a secular agnostic and conservative. I have no hostility towards religion, though cannot bring myself to believe in any particular religion or deity.
On one theoretical issue though, I am torn: Does there exist or can there exist a secular basis for objective morality?
In my own life, I operate under the assumption that there is objective morality. Rape, murder, abuse, are absolutely wrong and must be severely punished. But on a philosophical level, what is the objective basis for believing these things are wrong? I concede that I am incapable of producing one. However, as a secularist, I must act as though there is. Does that make sense?
In other words, good religion has a utilitarian and perhaps even evolutionary purpose. Society can exist fine with non-religious individuals, but a non-religious society with no objective basis for morality is doomed to all sorts of evils.
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Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Nor would I say that math uses only analytical logic and never synthetic
You side with Kant in that position. I'm not sure I believe in synthetic math. I think it's all just probing the implications of abstract concepts and teasing out those concepts meaning, that is, analysis.
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mack The Mike
I highly recommend Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg sermon on this topic.
Yes. I have read it before, and now I have read it again. But his philosophy is also theology, and theology -- or at least Christian theology and some Jewish theology -- is less opaque to me than many other types of philosophy (especially ontology -- epistemology, to the extent I've studied it, I get; but not ontology).
Perhaps it is because Christianity believes in a logos made flesh, and therefore cannot get lost in abstractions, but always has a concrete tie to the everyday human world.
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mack The Mike
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Nor would I say that math uses only analytical logic and never synthetic
You side with Kant in that position. I'm not sure I believe in synthetic math. I think it's all just probing the implications of abstract concepts and teasing out those concepts meaning, that is, analysis.
But you'll have nowhere to go with your analysis if your imagination can't leap ahead of your analysis and drop you hints from time to time.
Anyhow, anybody I've ever talked to who does math along with some more traditionally "creative" art (which includes myself, but many more others besides) says that doing math makes demands on your creativity just like art does. But with math, that creativity leaves less of a trace in the final product, I suppose. The creativity of artists is supposed to be emphasized. Not so much with math.
Mark would probably tell you much the same thing about engineering. It, too, requires more creativity than is "obvious".
And I seem to remember Feynman having something scathing to say about those who called his bongo playing, rather than his physics, evidence that he was a creative person.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Mack The Mike
I highly recommend Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg sermon on this topic.
Yes. I have read it before, and now I have read it again.
I'd be curious to hear the reaction of those on this thread who believe that morality can only come from Divine Revelation to the Pope's critique of Voluntarism -- the notion that right and wrong are just the result of Divine Command and that God might just as well have dictated completely different morals (and could well yet) without having altered human nature.
Such a position completely cuts Man off from moral reasoning, except I suppose for a certain amount of exegesis of the sacred texts. It leaves no basis for conversation among those who don't recognize the same sacred texts. It promotes, it seems to me, extremism.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
But you'll have nowhere to go with your analysis if your imagination can't leap ahead of your analysis and drop you hints from time to time.
Anyhow, anybody I've ever talked to who does math along with some more traditionally "creative" art [...] says that doing math makes demands on your creativity just like art does.
[...]
And I seem to remember Feynman having something scathing to say about those who called his bongo playing, rather than his physics, evidence that he was a creative person.
I think you are reading things into my post which I did not intend and I do not believe. I do not think reasoning is limited to analysis (as I've said it includes synthesis and transcendental reasoning as well). I do not think analysis can be done without creativity or imagination. I do not think that synthesis and science can be done without creativity either. And for the sake of completeness let me stipulate that I don't think philosophy can be done without creativity and imagination either.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Joseph Stanko
I do not believe that divinerevelationis needed as a source of morality, but I do believedivinity itselfis necessary.
Well yes. Those of us who believe in God believe in Him as a necessary being, not a contingent one. Surely the same can be said for any other field of study. While divine revelation isn't needed as a source of Biological Science, Divinity itself is necessary because God created Life. While divine revelation isn't needed as a source of Physics, Divinity itself is necessary because God is the Author of the Laws of Nature. Yet noone doubts that a secular basis for Biology and Physics, as fields of study, exists.
To me, the relevant point is that one need not begin the study of Morality with a belief in God. Theism isn't a pre-supposition of Morality. Also the method of inquiry in the Moral Science isn't primarily one of exegesis of sacred texts.
Now it may well turn out that the study of Moral Science may lead one to conclude that God exists just as the study of Biology or Physics might, but a conclusion is different than a basis.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Joseph Stanko
I agree that many atheists "recognize transcendence" in that they believe in healing crystals, auras, astrology, and host of other New Age beliefs that I personally regard as nonsense. However, the atheists that I respect, the ones that seem to me to present an intellectually rigorous and coherent worldview, are indeed crude materialists.
There's a third kind of atheist, one who believes in neither crack-pot non-sense nor what I'm calling "crude" materialism. I'm thinking of someone like Paul Davies, the author of God and The New Physics or Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mark Wilson
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Mack The Mike
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Yes, morality is enforced by consensus, so "morality =whateverour consensus says it is" is a reasonable operational definition.
I am not a huge fan of the operational definition of morality myself for the same reason. Because if you mistake it for a normative definition, you're sure in trouble!
[...]
But I think Mark and I have tried to make it clear that we don't want that operational definition of morality to be the normative definition. The operational definition of morality is inadequate for morality.
Interestingly, in Byron's original post he says "In my own life, I operate under the assumption that there is objective morality." So his operational definition is an objective one. This would be true of anyone who tries to do the right thing as opposed to the popular thing or the thing that they are being forced to do by someone else's might. All morality is operationally objective. It's only when we get to the theoretical level that subjectivity and nihilism creep in.
Edited on March 31, 2012 at 4:14pm