The origin of morality

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Postby Anonymous on Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:59 am

If people would not do wrong if they knew they were doing wrong, how is it that I can purposely blaspheme the name of God, knowing that, if God exists, it is Wrong to do so? Does this prove that God does not exist? For, if he does, I am committing wrong even though I know it is wrong.

The fact that I do not believe God exists is irrelevant, for if he did exist, I would nevertheless blashpeme his name. At least, I would blashpeme the YHVH of the Bible.

[edit]Of course, in order for it to be wrong to blashpeme YHVH, the Bible would have to be true. The morality in the Bible, however, does not comply with Draco's (and Socrates'?) view of morality. So I guess I was attempting to contradict a morality using another morality...[/edit]
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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:36 pm

Titus Marius Crispus wrote:If people would not do wrong if they knew they were doing wrong, how is it that I can purposely blaspheme the name of God, knowing that, if God exists, it is Wrong to do so? Does this prove that God does not exist? For, if he does, I am committing wrong even though I know it is wrong.


It's not because you 'know' it is wrong to do something, that you 'know' it. E.g. a burglar knows it is wrong to steal but keeps doing so for a variety of reasons. This could be self-sustainment, or simply not emotionally realising what he is doing to other people... that, too, is a form of 'knowing'. If your best friend is suffering and tells you so, you'll understand that. But will you understand on an emotional level? Language falls short of nuances to explain what I mean here, I'm afraid, but I hope I've made myself clear.

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Postby Aulus Dionysius Mencius on Thu Aug 12, 2004 2:42 pm

Salvete Gnae et alii

From the direction these last few postings have taken, I have another question for you all. Is morality equal to conscience?

I believe there is a slight difference. Let me take Curio's Hitlerjugend example again. There we can see that those youngsters blindly followed orders that may well go against their conscience, but it belongs to the group morality, so they go along with it, or be rejected if they do otherwise.
Conscience is taken out by propaganda or peer pressure. But then again, conscience might be what we earlier defined as personal morality. So, I await reactions with interest!

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Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Thu Aug 12, 2004 2:55 pm

Salve Mence

I think you just came up with two kind of morality, a personal morality and a group morality. Are the two the same? I seriously doubt it. A group morality is more or less defined by external influences or agreements on what is acceptable and what is not, by the group.
I think that a conscience comes into place or develops through upbringing, external influences like those of a community that decide what is right and what is rong. So I think that a conscience is the result of all these things. I think that conscience is created by morality. That the two can go hand in hand, doesn't necessarly mean that they are mutally exclusive.
vale

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Postby Curio Agelastus on Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:40 pm

Salvete omnes,

I think Romulus is correct when he summarises Mencius' comments by saying that there is a personal morality and a group morality. These group moralities are likely to overlap, but I think that, to answer your question, Menci, that conscience does equate to personal morality. Mencius' example of the Hitlerjugend also comes into play here - it was only those with the strongest personal moralities who were able to stand up against the group morality - most simply accepted the Nazi statements, even if they conflicted with their own conscience.

Mi Draco, I'm afraid I don't quite understand. How can a person mentally know that they are doing wrong, but not understand emotionally?

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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:00 pm

Salve Curio,

Marcus Scribonius Curio wrote:Mi Draco, I'm afraid I don't quite understand. How can a person mentally know that they are doing wrong, but not understand emotionally?


Example: your doctor says you're overweight and need to stop eating so much candy. Next time you see a candy bar, you eat it, although you are aware it is wrong. Still, it hasn't been engraved into your emotional system or your behaviour to *truly* accept this as wrong. If you pervasively felt it would be wrong (like, e.g. killing people without a reason), you wouldn't do it.

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Postby Quintus Pomponius Atticus on Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:57 pm

Salve Draco,

Theoretically, I agree with what you say, but on a practical level, I think it simply doesn't work. Tens of millions of people in Europe, every day, buy packets of cigarets with "smoking is deadly" on them. Our teachers, our doctors, the media, all of them say smoking is bad for our health and disturbing to our fellow men. Anti-tobacco leagues are formed everywhere. In our country, publicity for tobacco-brands is even forbidden. And the result of all this intensive campaigning ? People keep on smoking more than ever (I've seen statistics on that recently in the newspaper), and I'm not 'optimistic' about them feeling even vaguely guilty every time they light a cigaret.

Perhaps we can extend the discussion on this subject by linking it to Sartre's concept of bad faith. A short description :

"The crucial concept in his diagnosis is that of self-deception or 'bad faith' (mauvaise foi). Bad faith is the attempt to escape anguish by pretending to ourselves that we are not free. We try to convince ourselves that our attitudes and actions are determined by our character, our situation, our role in life, or anything other than ourselves. Sartre gives two famous examples of bad faith. He pictures a girl sitting with a man who she knows very well would like to seduce her. But when he takes her hand, she tries to avoid the painful necessity of a decision to accept or reject him, by pretending not to notice, leaving her hand in his as if she were not aware of it. She pretends to herself that she is a passive object, a thing, rather than what she really is, a conscious being who is free. The second illustration of the cafe waiter who is doing his job just a little too keenly; he is obviously 'acting the part'. If there is bad faith here, it is that he is trying to identify himself completely with the role of waiter, to pretend that this particular role determines his every action and attitude. Whereas the truth is that he has chosen to take on the job, and is free to give it up at any time. He is not essentially a waiter, for no man is essentially anything." [Source]

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Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:16 pm

Salvete

I have to agree with you Attice. In theory what Draco says can work, only if the mind is willing to and the person in question realizes they hav a problem. Lets take an extreme example here: Aids and sexual transmitted diseases. Everyone knows that unsafe sex leads to that. They realize that unprotected sex leads to these diseases, yet people still do it because of the mentality that it wouldn't happen to them. They are well aware of what they are doing and they know it is wrong, but yet that doesn't stop people from using protection when having sex. When it comes down to diseases, many people still think it wouldn't happen to them, yet it happens. When they are confronted with it, they wish they could reverse it. Which is normal. I don't know, but there must be a reason why people tend to be idiots and do stupid things.
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Postby Curio Agelastus on Fri Aug 13, 2004 10:39 pm

Salvete omnes,

I think this is getting off the point here; you cite smoking and eating when one shouldn't as examples of when a person knows what they are doing is wrong and yet go ahead anyway. However, it is not actually morally wrong to smoke or to overeat - if I choose to, there's nothing morally wrong with me doing so. I fail to see how your point is applicable to moral questions.

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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Sat Aug 14, 2004 12:30 am

Salvete Curio, Romule et Attice,

Well, morality is all about what is "right", yes? So eating too much candy that makes you fat is obviously not very healthy, ergo "not right". I also fail to see how Atticus' claims invalidate my point about knowing and *knowing*. In fact, the fact that some people come up with excuses to justify their behaviour supports my claim - deep down, they really *know* what they do is not right, but they come up with excuses.

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Postby Quintus Pomponius Atticus on Sat Aug 14, 2004 11:15 am

Salve Draco,

I also fail to see how Atticus' claims invalidate my point about knowing and *knowing*. In fact, the fact that some people come up with excuses to justify their behaviour supports my claim - deep down, they really *know* what they do is not right, but they come up with excuses.


Yes, but what is the point of your theory ("if you pervasively feel something to be wrong, you wouldn't do it") if it doesn't appear to work in reality for the vast majority of people, as I demonstrated with the example of smoking ?

E.g., when I discuss smoking with my mother she uses the classical smoker's excuses ("X has smoked since he is 12 and is 96 years old now" etc.), and when I tell her she is making up excuses, she acknowledges this and still she imperturbably continues smoking. She has read the "smoking is deadly" on the packets of cigarets she smokes, she has read articles about smokers averagely dying ten years earlier than non-smokers (in my personal 'cruisade' against tobacco, I always cut out articles with that sort of content from the newspaper), she knew people who died of cancer etc. How much "deeper" or "more pervasive" can one *know* something to be wrong ? The only way to sustain your theory, imo, is to explain clearly the nature of what you call *knowing* and how people can be made to *know* that they are doing wrong, in such a way that it will indeed induce them to alter their behaviour.

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Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Sat Aug 14, 2004 11:29 am

Salve Attice

The problem with smokers is that smoking is like a addiction. The younger you are, the more chance you get of stoping, the older you get, the harder it gets to stop smoking. Its an addiction, they know what they are doing is bad for them, but they do it anyway, because they need a siggaret. Eating can become a addiction as well, or one can eat out of boredom like my father does. He's bored and not to fall in sleep, he eats, this during the entire day. Some days he doesn't it as much as other days or during a heatwave, he will barely eat at all. My parents tried to stop and my mother was succesfull in stoping until my grandmother (the mother of my mother) was diagnosed with cancer. Than she started to smoke again, it wasn't longuecancer. The point is, smoking is like a addiction, the smallest thing can cause to turn the person back on smoking. An addiction is a addiction, no matter if you are addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, eaing, its an addiction and if the mind isn't willing to give it up, there isn't much anyone can do about it. There is a difference between knowing it that what you did is wrong and doing something about it.
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Postby Curio Agelastus on Sat Aug 14, 2004 10:59 pm

Salve Draco,

You have to make a distinction between different types of "wrong". For instance "2 + 3 = 4" is wrong, but it's certainly not "morally wrong". In the same way, it is not morally wrong to smoke (At least in private, in public it's disputable) or to overeat.

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Postby Quintus Pomponius Atticus on Mon Aug 16, 2004 12:09 pm

Salve iterum Draco,

Reading Anne Cheng's "Histoire de la pensée chinoise", I noted your theory, apart from Socrates, has a distinguished precursor in the person of the neo-Confucian scholar Cheng Yi (11th century). As I did not find an original English translation on the web, I have translated a piece from Cheng's French translation into English below :

Real knowledge is not the same as ordinary knowledge. I happened to meet a peasant who had been wounded by a tigre. When someone spoke about a tigre attacking people, everyone was frightened, yet only the peasant's face changed in a very particular way. No one, not even a small child, ignores the fact that a tigre can tear apart a man, but this is not yet real knowledge. The only knowledge that counts is one like the peasant's. Even so, those who persist in doing what they recognise as bad have not yet acquired real knowledge : if they had it, they would certainly not do it (to act badly) ever again. One must start from the basis of knowledge. As soon as is has acquired depth, [correct] action cannot but ensue. It has never been seen that someone had knowledge without being able to render it into action. Knowledge that cannot be rendered into action only demonstrates its own superficiality. If people, even when they are starved, abstain from eating poisonous plants [...] it is because they know (they are bad). When they act badly, it is because they do not know.
...
As soon as one is capable of knowing and seeing [the principle], how could one not act [according to this knowledge] ? As soon as every action is done as it should be done, it is no longer necessary to intervene intentionally. If such a need exists, it is because the mind is under the spell of the ego.


What do you think of this text, mi Draco ?

Vale,

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Postby Aulus Dionysius Mencius on Mon Aug 16, 2004 1:06 pm

Attice,

You are a wise man to come up with this... Indeed, this discussion has become a matter of phenomenon/noumenon, or, to stick with Chinese philosophy, the difference between dao and de.

I salute you, fellow sinology enthoiusiast
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Postby Gnaeus Dionysius Draco on Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:23 pm

Salve Attice,

Quintus Pomponius Atticus wrote:What do you think of this text, mi Draco ?


Yes, it demonstrates my principle somewhat, but seems to deal more with a practical aspect of the theory.

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