Re: Reason and Morality
Posted: September 12th, 2017, 1:24 am
To last few posts above -
I think it is fairly obvious that there is an innate "ethical system" (although that is a clumsy way of expressing what I mean). By this I mean we are empathic, social creatures. We didn't not all sit down and decide how to behave. A certain evolutionary benefit of social interaction has helped us become what we are today. The reason I made this post was to oppose the idea of a universal ethics or universal law.
As I have said above, I act as I wish to act irrespective of social values and state law ... and of course being a member of society I am limited in my capacity to act outside of societal norms. This is why I say when I investigate certain hypothetical situations where the decision is very hard for me to choose a "good" outcome, I try not to initially speak to others about it because in doing so I automatically place my thinking within the open social circle and will undoubtedly be more influenced by it because I wouldn't wish to say something viewed as deeply "immoral" by someone else and attract hatred through misunderstanding/misconception. And even if I think alone about some scenario I am still partially effected by the whole social dynamic because I will use "worded thought" and language, in and of itself, is a whole ethical system I cannot escape.
By the effect of language of thought I mean certain terms and concepts we use everyday that have embedded traditions of meaning. In religious circles we have the concept of "evil", which is used in the everyday world but etymologically is undoubtedly a "religiously" founded concept.
Jan Pahl -
Yes, like Damasio has shown, the neuroscientific data shows us that emotion and reason are one and the same thing. If you look at his views, combined with things Carl Jung says in his clinical work, you'll see that the "narrative" is important. We experience life as a narrative and the narrative is not always correlated very well with the "outside" world.
I think it is fairly obvious that there is an innate "ethical system" (although that is a clumsy way of expressing what I mean). By this I mean we are empathic, social creatures. We didn't not all sit down and decide how to behave. A certain evolutionary benefit of social interaction has helped us become what we are today. The reason I made this post was to oppose the idea of a universal ethics or universal law.
As I have said above, I act as I wish to act irrespective of social values and state law ... and of course being a member of society I am limited in my capacity to act outside of societal norms. This is why I say when I investigate certain hypothetical situations where the decision is very hard for me to choose a "good" outcome, I try not to initially speak to others about it because in doing so I automatically place my thinking within the open social circle and will undoubtedly be more influenced by it because I wouldn't wish to say something viewed as deeply "immoral" by someone else and attract hatred through misunderstanding/misconception. And even if I think alone about some scenario I am still partially effected by the whole social dynamic because I will use "worded thought" and language, in and of itself, is a whole ethical system I cannot escape.
By the effect of language of thought I mean certain terms and concepts we use everyday that have embedded traditions of meaning. In religious circles we have the concept of "evil", which is used in the everyday world but etymologically is undoubtedly a "religiously" founded concept.
Jan Pahl -
Yes, like Damasio has shown, the neuroscientific data shows us that emotion and reason are one and the same thing. If you look at his views, combined with things Carl Jung says in his clinical work, you'll see that the "narrative" is important. We experience life as a narrative and the narrative is not always correlated very well with the "outside" world.