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I mean...morality is nothing BUT emotion. I get it, you want to logically and rationally create a moral structure. I'm on board with that. The only thing logic can give you though is internal consistency. The problem is at a deeper level than that. Why have morality at all? Logically, you could point to many different consequential frameworks that certain rule sets aid society. Ok, but why aid society? At some point, you'll have to simply assert a value statement. Hell, even your belief in logic is itself a value statement. Go ahead and try to prove that logic is good using logic. It doesn't work like that.
With morality, you'll have to, at some point, assert an axiom which by definition means there is no underlying logical framework. That axiom is your starting point. Nothing beneath it. Your axiom might be "life has value", it might be "happiness is an end in itself", you might even put forward something as simple as "morality exists". All of these must be emotional though. They are something you simply feel is right, although gun to your head you could not logically deduce it to be true since there is no way to.
[–]Gake_The_Cake0 points
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(edited ago)
"Survival is good."
Good defined as the desired outcome. I absolutely agree with you- that is the assumption I make. The rest of it however...
The reason I make the statement that morality should be independent of emotion is that emotion will cause severe harm to moral structures. Emotions are the best method to mind control and manipulate people.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what morality is though. It is NOT objective. You can't point to it, you can't test it, you can't derive it. Humans are creatures of emotion and logic. The two are not opposites, they are orthogonal. They are unrelated. Something can be emotional and logical, non-emotional and logical, emotional and non-logical, or non-emotional and non-logical. Morality, insofar as I'm discussing purely its existence, is emotional. Now, defining morality is a problem that meta-ethics has been having for quite some time, but lets just try a quick experiment. Logically, it makes sense to create a series of rules which will push us collectively towards our desired outcomes. Is that morality? Well...its part of it. Its a little too...clinical though. Too sterile. That would describe the law perfectly, but the law is a very distinct social construct from morality. Morality doesn't just concern itself with beneficial vs. destructive, it concerns itself with good and evil. Those two concepts are simply not reducible to reward schema. What we think is good, what we think is evil, they are gut reactions. In other words, they're emotional.
That said, I don't want to seem like I'm talking past you. Obviously your issue is that if we create a world where those gut emotions rule we can end up in a VERY bad place. This should not really be refutable. You can have your pick of historical and modern examples. I'm just talking about your moral structure itself; what you're trying to accomplish (presumably protect against moral tyranny) is beyond a doubt a worthy goal.
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[–] Facade 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I mean...morality is nothing BUT emotion. I get it, you want to logically and rationally create a moral structure. I'm on board with that. The only thing logic can give you though is internal consistency. The problem is at a deeper level than that. Why have morality at all? Logically, you could point to many different consequential frameworks that certain rule sets aid society. Ok, but why aid society? At some point, you'll have to simply assert a value statement. Hell, even your belief in logic is itself a value statement. Go ahead and try to prove that logic is good using logic. It doesn't work like that.
With morality, you'll have to, at some point, assert an axiom which by definition means there is no underlying logical framework. That axiom is your starting point. Nothing beneath it. Your axiom might be "life has value", it might be "happiness is an end in itself", you might even put forward something as simple as "morality exists". All of these must be emotional though. They are something you simply feel is right, although gun to your head you could not logically deduce it to be true since there is no way to.
[–] Gake_The_Cake ago (edited ago)
"Survival is good."
Good defined as the desired outcome. I absolutely agree with you- that is the assumption I make. The rest of it however...
The reason I make the statement that morality should be independent of emotion is that emotion will cause severe harm to moral structures. Emotions are the best method to mind control and manipulate people.
[–] Facade ago
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what morality is though. It is NOT objective. You can't point to it, you can't test it, you can't derive it. Humans are creatures of emotion and logic. The two are not opposites, they are orthogonal. They are unrelated. Something can be emotional and logical, non-emotional and logical, emotional and non-logical, or non-emotional and non-logical. Morality, insofar as I'm discussing purely its existence, is emotional. Now, defining morality is a problem that meta-ethics has been having for quite some time, but lets just try a quick experiment. Logically, it makes sense to create a series of rules which will push us collectively towards our desired outcomes. Is that morality? Well...its part of it. Its a little too...clinical though. Too sterile. That would describe the law perfectly, but the law is a very distinct social construct from morality. Morality doesn't just concern itself with beneficial vs. destructive, it concerns itself with good and evil. Those two concepts are simply not reducible to reward schema. What we think is good, what we think is evil, they are gut reactions. In other words, they're emotional.
That said, I don't want to seem like I'm talking past you. Obviously your issue is that if we create a world where those gut emotions rule we can end up in a VERY bad place. This should not really be refutable. You can have your pick of historical and modern examples. I'm just talking about your moral structure itself; what you're trying to accomplish (presumably protect against moral tyranny) is beyond a doubt a worthy goal.