Right & Wrong

[Fist and Faith]

Before Cybr and Vraith get too far into the discussion in the Tank, I'll offer this thread.

What is right, and what is wrong? I guess a starting point is what we've talked about here often enough. IMO, if it caused harm, it is wrong. I'd say it can go further; forcing your will on another is wrong. Could be no physical, emotional, economic, ..., harm is done. But not allowing someone to make their own decisions, to determine another person's growth or course, is wrong.

Of course, the debates here usually take place because we don't always agree on whether or not something is causing harm.

It's also possible that something that does not cause harm to any individual does cause harm to society. And society must be a part of this discussion. And what harms society is also argued.

[Avatar]

I think that forcing your will on somebody is harmful in itself, even if no physical/economic/whatever is percieved.

I think that anything that harms another unnecessarily is wrong. I don't think that "harming society" is necessarily wrong. I'm not even sure that it can be done through the actions of any single person.

--A

[Fist and Faith]

No, I don't think it can be done by a single person, either. But people are gregarious. Not too many hermits out there. People want to live in societies. And I think people who are trying to make that impossible are doing something wrong.

[Seven Words]

I'd say, at the heart of it...would you be amenable to another person doing *whatever* to you? If you have no objections, probably right. If you DON'T want that to happen...it's probably wrong.

[Orlion]

Sounds like a categorical imperative, Seven (7:I was going for the Golden Rule) Yeah, whatever

To me, right and wrong are completely extrinsic. They only exist in reference to something else, not in of themselves. I think it starts principally with the individual. Fist, Avatar, and I are pretty individualistic folk, so forcing one's will on another is wrong to us. If we were collectivists, we'd probably say some crap about the parts not surviving without working as a body or that sort of crap. Based on that, we're not going to get any agreement except amongst likeminded folk.

Now, we do like to live in societies. Why is that? I think it's because it allows us to do what we want, follow our own "morality" (at least, for most of us). Consider: I can study organic chemical reactions right now because I don't have to worry about procuring food by hunting, gathering, or farming. This is because someone else is doing it for me. Likewise, you guys don't have to worry about understanding organic chemical reactions because someone else is doing it for you

With this in mind, I believe social right and wrong needs to be in reference to this sort of interaction. The problem arises when we try to bring other ideals into it.

[Vraith]

Random, not necessarily developed or related, thoughts:

Agree basically with Avatar: at least between adults, the exercise of your will/power over anyone but yourself is innately harmful. [though sometimes it may be necessary despite the harm...and I can't think of any way to raise children that doesn't at least sometimes require it, though there are more harmful and less harmful methods of application].

I agree with Orlion's first point, basically: every right/wrong is context-based. Which is NOT identical with what most call "relative."

Part of the root problem: we are bio-wired with inherent contradictions.
We don't only "want" [as Fist said] or "like" for pragmatic reasons [as O indicates] to be social: we are made that way
Ditto, and contrarily, for individual.
The vast majority of us become to some extent "ill," or "diseased" in mind/personality if we don't get both.

Anciently, some things [rape, woman in the home, among others] were bio/survival drives. But that does NOT mean they were/are ever morally/ethically "right," even before we HAD morals or ethics.

Reaching further up-thread: society can be indirectly/eventually harmed from an individual...but usually only by communication/agreement and/or coercion [becoming social.]

MOST of the harm to societies, as a whole unit, comes from groups in society attempting to prevent what they call harm to society.

And there's always the problem [with many variations]: which is more "right:" for one to die, or for 10,000 to die? Insoluble, because it depends on many [perhaps uncountable] factors and at least one of those factors is always unknowable [what the consequences will be]. Yet, the question is in play in almost every situation [though not always in this extreme form].

[Avatar]

Well, we evolved that way anyway, in order to ensure the survival of our genetic legacy.

Nature has no ethics or morals, nature only has survival or death. Some morality I think derived from empathy. Our ability to imagine what it would be like if somebody did something to us, and our realisation that we wouldn't want them to.

Some derived from survival needs once we got a society...it was bad for our little society to kill its own members, because that threatened its survival as a whole.

We agree not to do certain things, on the understanding that other people agree not to do them to us.

"Wrong" is a shared understanding of what may or may not be done to ourselves or each other. Change that understanding, and morality changes as well.

It has happened and will happen countless times. Our social evolution is much faster than our biological evolution though, and the conflict arises where biology has inevitably not kept up. Because, as mentioned, biology has no morals.

--A

[Vraith]

Because, as mentioned, biology has no morals.

--A

I used to think that...but I'm not so sure anymore. There is a significant amount of evidence of physical brain structure dedicated to processing those things the other parts of the brain decide [are taught? are brainwashed to believe?] are "moral" issues.

[Fist and Faith]

Easy enough to say murder is wrong. And the animals only kill for food. If WE only killed for food... But then, the newly crowned alpha male will kill the offspring of the male he just dethroned. We might say it's because the superior genes of the new alpha will be more common in the population. But the old alpha may have been superior. But his prime was five years ago, and this new alpha's prime may never be as good. But that's not taken into account. It's just murder.

[Avatar]

Because, as mentioned, biology has no morals.

--A

I used to think that...but I'm not so sure anymore. There is a significant amount of evidence of physical brain structure dedicated to processing those things the other parts of the brain decide [are taught? are brainwashed to believe?] are "moral" issues.

Just because we use a big chunk of our brains to worry about them doesn't mean that's the original function of that chunk. Nothing is immoral to nature, because anything possible is natural in the sense that it exists.

--A

[Orlion]

Because, as mentioned, biology has no morals.

--A

I used to think that...but I'm not so sure anymore. There is a significant amount of evidence of physical brain structure dedicated to processing those things the other parts of the brain decide [are taught? are brainwashed to believe?] are "moral" issues.

Just because we use a big chunk of our brains to worry about them doesn't mean that's the original function of that chunk. Nothing is immoral to nature, because anything possible is natural in the sense that it exists.

--A

In other words, Vraith, to use ethical methodology, what's right is obligatory (it'll happen) what's wrong is forbidden (it ought not happen) if it's gray, it is merely permissible (it can happen or not, doesn't matter).

Many things when observed in nature are "merely permissible", they can happen or not, hence the idea that nature has no sense of right or wrong, everything is "merely permissible."

Of course, that doesn't take into account the stuff we do or try to do that nature fights against us tooth and nail (such as several chemical reactions that would be entropically disfavored, but we do them anyway... like the formation of fizzy drinks )

[rusmeister]

Still trying to contribute here, for now...

I think a great advantage of referencing a faith tradition, particularly an ancient one - like mine, but the same thing could be said for the other ancient world religions - is that you get a body of accumulated wisdom in sorting through questions like these. We're not limited to whatever we can figure out in our own pitifully short 30, 40, 50 or 70 years. We can learn about a school of thought - how such-and-such an idea was developed, how other people took the ball and ran further with it, and so much greater progress can be made.

In the physical sciences, we accept that there is a given body of knowledge that is agreed upon and passed down - right or wrong, but widely believed to be right at the time - and that scientists can only make further progress if they accept the given scientific tradition, as opposed to simply reinventing the wheel in their field. Obviously, if scientists spent their time doing that, they wouldn't get very far.

Yet this is exactly what people without an accumulated tradition wind up doing at its best - if they get THEIR assumptions right. They can and do spend a good deal of the time being skeptical about the traditions offered them, but skepticism as a philosophy is not science, but still assume the rightness of their own assumptions, and as a result, cannot attain the depth of those who accept a tradition on the basis of authority - authority that they find to be, not deceitful, conniving or power-hungry, but rather consistently right regarding the truth in accordance with how they perceive it. We are, after all, limited in both our individual capacity and our time on this earth.

Thus, al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas, John Chrysostom, or the Dalai Lama have an enormous head-start on the person trying to work it out for themselves.

That's my big thought on trying to answer these questions that I dare to think I may be able to communicate.

[Fist and Faith]

rus, I'm not sure what you mean by "a body of accumulated wisdom." In the physical sciences, new information and technology are added to the old, and new things result. There is growth. A weird energy was discovered, and named "electricity." It was then discovered that passing electricity through different gasses produced different colors. Now we have neon lights. And other things were discovered, and invented, and combined, and we have these computers. And space shuttles. Etc etc. From the accumulation of knowledge.

In the matter of right & wrong, in your faith, it began with "X is right; Y is wrong." There have been no new understandings of anything since then that have revealed the true nature of anything, and changed that. X is still right, and Y is still wrong. If, by accumulated, you mean more and more voices have joined in to say X is right and Y is wrong, then I understand. I'm just not sure if you're talking about something other than that.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Actually, Rus, Fist's response directly above brings me to a question about the CSL quote in your sig line. In what manner is it meant? Is it meant to be ironic, or sarcastic, or is it simpler than that? Taken simply, and by extension, and assuming the individual is wrong, and assuming I were to accept a particular body of wisdom of what is right and what is wrong, then the exercise of thinking becomes more about understanding how or why people came to the conclusions that (you) I already accept, in order to accept them more fully, instead of bothering about why to accept them at all. You are already at the stage where you have begun to brandish what you already accept, and I'm sure it isn't always easy.
But for one such as I, freshly post-divorce, and in the beginning stages of annulment, I'm at a point in my life where I question, not necessarily the collective wisdom of millenia-old institutions, but rather their applicability to me. I am told these institutions are expressly not a la carte, but I find the grand buffet to be anathema to me and my joy of individual thought -- and I am not a point in my life where I understand how an individual can remain a happy individual if, as you say, the individual is always wrong. Call it willful, or whatever, but that's where I am. So, for now, I've turned in my secret Papal decoder ring, and am still waiting for my refund in the mail.

dw

[aliantha]

Riffing on what Fist said: Science began accumulating its body of wisdom long before Orthodoxy existed. As soon as early man realized that doing X always resulted in Y, and told his friends, he was adding to the scientific knowledge base. We've simply been refining it since then.

[Vraith]

I used to think that...but I'm not so sure anymore. There is a significant amount of evidence of physical brain structure dedicated to processing those things the other parts of the brain decide [are taught? are brainwashed to believe?] are "moral" issues.

Just because we use a big chunk of our brains to worry about them doesn't mean that's the original function of that chunk. Nothing is immoral to nature, because anything possible is natural in the sense that it exists.

--A

In other words, Vraith, to use ethical methodology, what's right is obligatory (it'll happen) what's wrong is forbidden (it ought not happen) if it's gray, it is merely permissible (it can happen or not, doesn't matter).

Many things when observed in nature are "merely permissible", they can happen or not, hence the idea that nature has no sense of right or wrong, everything is "merely permissible."

Of course, that doesn't take into account the stuff we do or try to do that nature fights against us tooth and nail (such as several chemical reactions that would be entropically disfavored, but we do them anyway... like the formation of fizzy drinks )

Both missing the implications, I think [or I'm misreading]. It doesnt' matter if nature/biology cares. If vision was irrelevant to survival, we wouldn't have eyes, or brain centers to process it. We have "moral" brain nexus: moral thought must have survival value. Nature/biology may not care, but they support moral thought.
OTOH: just like we have certain language structures inherent, they are blank/empty, and they don't care what we put in them...we can build any language we want. Similar for "moral"...we're made with the capacity to meet a necessity [or at least have an advantage]...but we fill it with whatever the hell we're raised with.
AND we can develop, or not, the detail/flexibility/depth of that kind of thought. And like intelligence/musicianship and everything else, some of us will be better at it than others.
AND the initial need for this moral processing is almost certainly rooted explicitly in the fact of human necessity for social grouping.

[rusmeister]

rus, I'm not sure what you mean by "a body of accumulated wisdom." In the physical sciences, new information and technology are added to the old, and new things result. There is growth. A weird energy was discovered, and named "electricity." It was then discovered that passing electricity through different gasses produced different colors. Now we have neon lights. And other things were discovered, and invented, and combined, and we have these computers. And space shuttles. Etc etc. From the accumulation of knowledge.

In the matter of right & wrong, in your faith, it began with "X is right; Y is wrong." There have been no new understandings of anything since then that have revealed the true nature of anything, and changed that. X is still right, and Y is still wrong. If, by accumulated, you mean more and more voices have joined in to say X is right and Y is wrong, then I understand. I'm just not sure if you're talking about something other than that.

WEll, yes I AM talking about something more than that, Fist. There is a difference in sophistication and knowledge level between saying "Objects fall down and not up" and even Newtonian theory of gravity. As heresies appeared, dogma appeared to combat them. Aspects of the nature of God, Christ and man were hammered out. There is an enormous body of theology, of which you guys are totally ignorant and of which even I know only surface scratchings. the fact that you are ignorant of it does not mean that it is less significant a body of knowledge that that of the natural sciences.

It goes even farther than I would allow as right, but if you want development, check out Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" (45 MB in MS Word). I happen to think that even though not quite right, there is a good deal of truth, even in Aquinas - and it doesn't seem that anyone here has the faintest familiarity with him. (Even I have only passing acquaintance - and I've actually read a little.)

Where you ARE right is that the basic truths remain the same. But so does ice continue to melt into water, which continues to vaporize, and objects to fall down, even though we can express these things in ever more complex theories. Theological understandings are far more sophisticated than the first century Christian ever needed to get along. Christology developed to combat Arianism. Montanism, and other ideas that would have violated the original revealed Truths. Completely new truths of the theological sort come from revelation, not scientific exploration, so it's silly to expect the same things from two such different fields. But there ARE things in common, and as bodies of knowledge go, they are both capable of growth, even if not in the same ways. But if you insist on proofs of physical science to prove theological or metaphysical truths, you'll never get them - and never prove by a jot that you have disproved anything metaphysical or theological

What it comes down to is that you ought to dip your toes into the waters of Christian - and Orthodox - theology before making assumptions about it. It's interesting how most people assume the truth of what natural scientists currently claim on faith, while knowing very little except for the smattering of schooling they get, and which a real scientist would say hardly got their feet wet, while being automatically skeptical on metaphysical truths.

There's a ton we don't know about things we haven't specially studied. Of course, we CAN'T study everything, and are entitled to make conclusions based on what we DO know. But I think that most know a good deal less about the natural sciences, and take much more on simple faith, on believing the authority of scientists, textbooks, etc that proclaim it, let alone about Christian theology - or even philosophy - the accumulated body of which was largely abandoned in the so-called "Age of Reason" - and a good deal in the wake of the Reformation. And Eastern Christian philosophy and theology was never known in the West (I think the RCC put a good deal of effort into casting a spell of unnoticeability on the very existence of the Eastern Church).

[Orlion]

*shrug* It always seemed to me that a lot of the Christian apologists (for apologists they were) always sought the same complexity as the Greek philosophers. Of course, they couldn't. Plato was a philosopher and had to exert all his arguing power to establish his quandaries. On the other hand, Aquinas and others like him all ready had the conclusion and framework, and everything was set to prove that and rejecting contrary ideas ("heresies"). Plato would point out to his readers the problems of his ideas, Aquinas always assumed his ideas were perfect. That's really the difference between theology and philosophy. Philosophy is very open-ended, and is conducive to development of ideas. Theology, on the other hand, always has to work within the framework of previously held conclusions.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Heh. According to Dictionary.com, an archaic definition of 'metaphysical' is 'imaginary or fanciful.'
So, "metaphysical truths" become, by an older definition than the one you intend, something also quite the opposite of what you intended with your post.
I find philosophy to be a very frustrating subject, since it deals in arguments of the abstract, something similar to theoretical physics. Theology is an even more dreadful subject for me who, as an engineer, likes to remain in the concrete, not the abstract. Give me an equation, fudge factors and all -- something I can measure -- not hand-waving based on invisible sky kings.
Castles of logic built on theological (read "assumed") truths, are castles built on air. Hard to prove or disprove. Thus the term 'faith', right? To believe, or not to believe, that is the question for me.
So, can you see why I can't get very far into CSL or GKC? They have already made a series of foundational assumptions that I cannot casually tread over, because I don't agree with some of the foundational premises. Further, based on the conclusions that are drawn once you accept that and travel the full path of that dogma, the destination is someshere I don't desire to be anyway. I can't say that I won't ever be there, but today I'm pretty confident that I don't want to be.

dw

[Fist and Faith]

What it comes down to is that you ought to dip your toes into the waters of Christian - and Orthodox - theology before making assumptions about it.

I made no assumptions. I asked a question. So okay, by "accumulating", you mean things more than simply accumulating names of people who agree on the same thing. Can you give us a hint about any of these things? What is the basic idea along these lines that makes you suggest Aquinas?