Thank you for the post. My current moral system is freshly baked and only a few years old. I have not yet thrown many challenging questions at it, and you provided a concentrated blast of said questions in an easy to use format.
I did not have trouble answering the questions other than really understanding the grit of the ‘tautology’ section at the end. I am comfortable with the answers and don’t currently see any obvious holes in my moral system that make me nervous.
For the record, I am a ‘particles and forces’ nihilist, as in everything in the universe derives from a small number of fairly simple equations, and there’s no magic, meaning, or purpose to anything. I happen to be alive because my genetics happen to be set up that way; I would prefer to keep living for the same reason. That preference to keep living, and to keep doing the things I happen to be configured to find enjoyable, is the ultimate long term goal of my moral system.
It just so happens that the path which maximizes my ultimate long term goal is one that generally obeys laws, generally engages in long term behaviour, and generally cooperates in modern society. While it also encourages others to do the same, the mechanism by which they do so may be arbitrary so long as the results are the same.
If anything means something to you, then the universe has meaning for you. If you have a purpose for any things, then those things have a purpose for you. The universe is full of meanings and purposes that people have.
I think it is a common error, that I’ve shared myself, in denying meaning to things (meaning, purpose, morality) because the world is full of crazy people associating crazy meanings with those terms. But why let the crazy people own all the words, when there are perfectly sane and useful senses of those words?
In my case, I used to call myself amoral because I rejected the various notions of objective morality as the stuff of lunatics. But on later consideration, I found I had a number of preferences about the behavior of others that sure looked much like the morality of others, I just didn’t assert my moral preferences as imperatives from God/The Universe/Reason/Truth, but as imperatives from me. Wouldn’t it be handy to have a word for moral preferences without crazy and confused conceptual baggage? I think so, so I now assert a non crazy morality conception of morality as morality.
I think for similar reasons, I think of morality as descriptive rather than philosophical. That is, humans have certain moral sentiments, on average, that have evolved in to place because cooperation is so darned important a part of the survival advantage of humans. Attempts to instrospect on the moral feelings and derive “ought” from them are a side effect of the sentiments and rationality that has evolved to serve humans so well. Looking for general moral truths beyond “this is right because it feels right” is at best besides the point and at worst impossible.
Thank you for the post. My current moral system is freshly baked and only a few years old. I have not yet thrown many challenging questions at it, and you provided a concentrated blast of said questions in an easy to use format.
I did not have trouble answering the questions other than really understanding the grit of the ‘tautology’ section at the end. I am comfortable with the answers and don’t currently see any obvious holes in my moral system that make me nervous.
For the record, I am a ‘particles and forces’ nihilist, as in everything in the universe derives from a small number of fairly simple equations, and there’s no magic, meaning, or purpose to anything. I happen to be alive because my genetics happen to be set up that way; I would prefer to keep living for the same reason. That preference to keep living, and to keep doing the things I happen to be configured to find enjoyable, is the ultimate long term goal of my moral system.
It just so happens that the path which maximizes my ultimate long term goal is one that generally obeys laws, generally engages in long term behaviour, and generally cooperates in modern society. While it also encourages others to do the same, the mechanism by which they do so may be arbitrary so long as the results are the same.
If anything means something to you, then the universe has meaning for you. If you have a purpose for any things, then those things have a purpose for you. The universe is full of meanings and purposes that people have.
I think it is a common error, that I’ve shared myself, in denying meaning to things (meaning, purpose, morality) because the world is full of crazy people associating crazy meanings with those terms. But why let the crazy people own all the words, when there are perfectly sane and useful senses of those words?
In my case, I used to call myself amoral because I rejected the various notions of objective morality as the stuff of lunatics. But on later consideration, I found I had a number of preferences about the behavior of others that sure looked much like the morality of others, I just didn’t assert my moral preferences as imperatives from God/The Universe/Reason/Truth, but as imperatives from me. Wouldn’t it be handy to have a word for moral preferences without crazy and confused conceptual baggage? I think so, so I now assert a non crazy morality conception of morality as morality.
I think for similar reasons, I think of morality as descriptive rather than philosophical. That is, humans have certain moral sentiments, on average, that have evolved in to place because cooperation is so darned important a part of the survival advantage of humans. Attempts to instrospect on the moral feelings and derive “ought” from them are a side effect of the sentiments and rationality that has evolved to serve humans so well. Looking for general moral truths beyond “this is right because it feels right” is at best besides the point and at worst impossible.