archetypal fool

I've recently started reading the Republic for the first time, and I came to a very personally significant point: When Socrates is debating with Thrasymachus about what is justice, they come to the point where they're taking sides in the modern notion of ethical egotism, with Socrates against the notion and Thrasymachus for. Thrasymachus' argument is that everyone should always act in such a way that they always benefit, regardless of the consequences. Socrates argues against this, stating that if every individual acted in such a way, then society would break down.

As a biology major, this conclusion struck a chord within me - this is the same conclusion animal behaviorists and ecologists come to; it makes perfect sense: If every individual within a species acted on its own accord, as selfish and individualistic as Thrasymachus suggests we should, that species would quickly go extinct, and thus, a fine balance between ethical and unethical behavior has evolved and is present within us - it is because of this ultimate result that it is reasonable to conclude that our notions of true and relevant ethics and morals are derived from nature, from our very own ancestors, and are not culturally relative (as Thrasymachus also claims) or pointless/stupid (as Glaucon states).

Theists adamantly claim that morals and ethics are provided to us through belief in diety, as well as adherence to a holy book of choice - I refute this claim and return that ethics and morals are not products of society, but rather, they are hard-wired into out nature, our being, and our collective conciseness.

But, then again, I could be wrong. What does the TFP community think about the subject?

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Ustwo

Having read the Bible and the Koran (translated so I'm sure I missed the nuance of the profits thought ) I'm quite sure that we receive none of our morality from either.

Morality is in part our nature as a social animal, wolves, chimps, baboons, and lions all have their own morality which allows them to function together, no reason we should be different. Its then maintained by threat of force/punishment in their cases and in ours.

If there is a power outage in a major city, all the bibles in the world won't stop the parasites, but extra police will.

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Nimetic

I'm no philosopher... but my take on it is that empathy is an inbuilt capability that humans have, to a lesser or greater degree - which assists us with cooperation and hence gives evolutionary advantage.

At the same time, the ability to fool others also provides individual advantage. So we have this as an evolutionary remnant also.

Next big thing is the "prisoners dilemma" (please place the apostrophe yourself).

This is a real interesting game, a set of situations where trust provides advantage. A variant of the game that allows repeated trades helps show why cooperation may be more marked in small communities - and less advantageous in large ones.... essentially, if you rip somebody off in a big city, you're less likely to encounter them again. Conversely in a small town, it pays to be a nice guy.

On a completely different track...

I was listening to some excellent lectures (while driving) on Kant. He had a powerful summation of how to determine whether something is moral or not. (I regret laughing at the arts students now).

In contrast, Nietzsche seems to view morals and religion as somewhat of a herd mentality, a weakness.

Dunno. For sure though... there's no need for a deity. But there probably is a need for some teaching.... my gut feeling is that kids have the capability to learn morals, but they don't come with morals inbuilt and fully functioning. (Parents help me out on that?).

asaris

Nietzsche has his own moral maxim -- "Act always in such a way as to act out of strength, rather than out of weakness." For a peculiar gloss he provides on that, check out the quote in my signature from one of his letters.

My own personal belief is that morality stems from our nature -- we are created so that our end is union with God. I think it's contingent what the exact commands are, and we don't understand our nature or God's nature well enough to know what commands are contingent and which are going to be the same in every possible world. We learn about morality primarily through God's words: Christ, the Bible, and the natural world.

Now, that depends on a number of assumptions that most of you probably don't share. But there you have it

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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

skada

I am more inclined to say that we are hardwired with basic morals..

Just consider for a moment that you are completely invisible .. cannot be traced .. detected in any way in society .. how will u behave ??
will you do all the things which society thought immoral like killing .. robbing etc or you will also do something useful ?

However selfish we may be . we do indeed do something good for other for totaly sake of doing it w/o reasons.

The Holy Books being just the directiuon for the society the obviously are more society benifit oriented (rather that thinking about personnel favor) that what is my opinion. Any thoughts ?

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Willravel

Precisely. Morality is an extension of our hunter-gatherer days where the good of the pack was as important if not more so than the good of the individual so far as survival of the species. A lone human a little over 10,000 years ago stood a lesser chance of survival without a pack. With a pack, a human could defend against predators, hunt with a higher success rate, could find a mate, and could establish better shelter. This even lead to specific skill sets becoming possible, which lead to the shift to an agrarian society.

This is also why I believe that socialism is the natural state of humans, but Ustwo may not agree with that 100%.

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filtherton

I think all morals stem from the ability, or lack thereof, to sympathize with other beings. Everything else is just a rationalization.

archetypal fool

Well, that's the same argument Glaucon makes. I believe that if you're keeping the appearance of being just or ethical for the sake of not being challenged or because you don't want the negative connotations of unjust/unethical people, then you aren't really being ethical for the right reasons. The whole concept of the Ring of Gyges argument isn't one of ethics, but of power being used to control others without their best interests in mind, and for your own advancement - therefor, a person who yields the Ring of Gyges and acts unethically is unethical to begin with.

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I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet

Nimetic

With due respect....

I don't think that it's smart to get your personal morality from religion. There are lots of religions - and they have varying teachings.

Ustwo

Insects are often socialists and do it well.

Naked mole rats are the only mammals that are socialists to my knowledge.

They have evolved to be very much like ants, even living underground for their whole lives, fascinating if very ugly creatures.

Nothing in ape evolution is even remotely socialist.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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Willravel

When we were in our hunter gatherer stage, between 20k and maybe 15k years ago, humans moved in and lived in packs, or family units. It's here where humans derive the concepts of egalitarianism (and maybe the beginning of stoicism). It was when we had these non-hierarchical, small, roving bands of humans that we were socialist. One could even argue that before this time when we moved in troops when we were still Cro-Magnons, we were also socialist.

The basic idea was that each member of a family unit contributed to the whole unit first. Preceding the Neolithic Revolution, there was not agriculture or proper infrastructure. As hunter-gatherers, humans could not often live on their own because conditions made that difficult. The consistency and safety of larger numbers all contributing to the whole created a better environment for humans to flourish. At this time, things like food, clothing, and tools were shared by a group, and the spoils of any kill were equally distributed even to those who were not involved in the hunt. That's socialism. If you need a more current example, many Native American tribes were deeply socialist (nonsecular polytheistic socialism), and were very successful. Had the Americas had more germs and steel, the Europeans may not have been able to get ahead in their technology, and we might all be speaking Mohican.

/Might be a threadjack, not 100% sure.

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Ustwo

First, we really don't know what sort of societies they had, there are no records of any kind. Claiming they shared things equally is nothing but someones untestable hypothesis.

Even if your claims here were 100% true, it just proves that socialism is successful under stone age conditions where survival is razor thin. Promoting modern socialism based on neolithic culture is not convincing that it the model that would work for anything beyond a small family clan. In such circumstances I could see socialism working as the society is small enough to monitor the slackers.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Willravel

Haven't you taken Anthropology classes? Historical information derived from archeology, paleontology, ethnography, and many more come together to paint a pretty clear picture of how hunter gatherer humans lived.

Not only that, but we can see similar behavior in more modern hunter-gatherer societies.

If you don't believe me, ask the foremost experts in the world:
Professor Richard Borshay Lee
Professor Irven DeVore
Read a few of their books on the subject, and you'll get a good picture.

As they both mention, and as is general knowledge so far as I know, the nomadic movement of hunter gatherers requires a small but equal distribution of resources (I think I might be paraphrasing from one of them, but I'm at work so I don't have access to my books, just don't want people thinking I'm plagiarizing). If a hunter gatherer has a shitload of stuff, he can't be mobile, will exhaust his environment of resources, and die. That's why capitalism couldn't exist back then. They had nowhere to put all their stuff (to simplify).
If my claims are 100% true, then the root of morality in humans today is socialist in nature. With stupidly massive populations like we see today, no single government works. Not capitalist, not socialist, not oligarchy. It's in certain combinations, including aspects of capitalism and socialism, under a constitutional republic, that I suspect that a large population (over 10m) could do well.

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Baraka_Guru

I think it is important to distinguish the balance between our inherent behaviour as animals and our capacity for reason as humans. One such idea to note is that of the social contract, which was eloquently explored by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

The idea is that as individuals, we agree to a set of rules that apply to each of us as individuals as a part of a whole. This whole is what we call society.

Within the contract, you surrender certain individual freedoms in exchange for protection and rights upheld by society. Breaking the social contract may result in your losing these protections and rights as a punishment.

This is a simplification, but I'm sure you get the idea. The point to note is that whether people are savages by nature doesn't matter so long as they've agreed to the social contract and abide by its conditions.

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albania

Have you read Hobbes(or Locke for that matter)... cause eloquent is not how I'd put it? Confusing, boring and utterly devoid of passion seem more appropriate; but I think your actual point was that they did a thorough job, with which I'd definitely agree.

filtherton

I think it's fallacious to separate our behavior as animals from our ability to reason. Our behavior as animals, like all animals, is the direct result of out abilities to reason. And though it certainly can make for interesting musings, i don't think it's reasonable to talk about humans as they exist outside of society, because humans haven't really ever existed outside of society. The species is the community, and whether you choose to go with the flow or not, or even drop out all together, you're still part of it so far as it provides context for your existence.

There is no primordial man, at least as far as solitary prototypes with inherent morality go; humans have always lived with each other. The only significant changes to the human experience have been external. Even if there was some singular original solitary human, no one can reasonably claim that he bears any kind of significant representation of humanity in general.

Crompsin

A crusty old bastard once said: Two ways to learn things in life, gentlemen: Endless repetition or blunt force trauma.

Let's suggest that this applies to ethics as well.

Perhaps we are where we are today because we usually remember where we came from... and that this is generally a positive thing. Evolution for a reason.

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skada

that is quite a remark
well, i think our socialist system is far more sophasticated than say insects... their system has NOT evolved where as ours has ! I dont think ants were behaving say 2000 years back differently than now.. but we do ..

While evolution of societies has only led to manupulation of environment for our cause which i dont think has been even nearly achieved by other species . What do you say ?

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Nimetic

It seems that most people agree that there is a boundary or border - between what might be called moral activity, and immoral activity.

However that boundary is invisible, and we all see it to be in slightly different locations.

Fred might say that it follows a particular line and that he knows this because he read it.

Dave might say that it follows another path, and that he knows this because he was told by his parents.

Sally might say that it follows a third path, slightly different - because this would be a sensible location to partition the land, if one was going to do so.

And others would consider all three crazy. There is no wall they say. Walk back and forth, look and see, what boundary, it's just a convention.

abaya

There is a fascinating article in today's NY Times on this very topic:

Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?

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for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
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Crompsin

"Right, wrong... I'm the guy with the gun!" - Bruce Campbell

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C19H28O2 = C6H2(NO2)3CH3

All your base are belong to us.

filtherton

Ethics are derived from b-list movie characters?

RenaissanceII

Perhaps it is as simple as doing unto others as you would want them to do for you.

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Crompsin

Better fictional characters to run our society than real folks.

Fictional characters often have consistent morals.

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C19H28O2 = C6H2(NO2)3CH3

All your base are belong to us.