Philosophical Vegan Forum

I find morals to be a conceptually subjective and irrational facet of belief. Morals are extremely diverse among equally incoherent and logically fallacious religions and cannot be factually defined. They cannot even be described as that which is most optimal within a closed system, both because "optimal" is equally undefined, and because morals are not generally founded upon reason within a given society. Rather they are human perceptions, established through irrelevant personal experience, indoctrination, and primitive evolutionary inclinations. Morals exist to maintain purpose and order in society. The problem arises when morals are conflicting, particularly when they are a function of religion. In these scenarios it is necessary to realize that morals are ineffectual because they are unavoidably fluid in definition. The Universe possesses no intentions. It has no desires. It merely is.

Just as it is essential to discontinue our practice of establishing legislation based on unsubstantiated religious beliefs, we must stop relying on morals to create order in society. Rather, we must embrace logic:

It is illogical to discriminate based on sexual orientation because there is simply no reason to, other than those which depend on unscientific and irrational religious concepts;

It is illogical to discriminate based on skin pigmentation because this physical attribute is irrelevant to anything else than itself, and because this produces undesirable violent conflicts;

It is illogical to consume animal products (namely animal meat) because it is unnecessary for human survival and effectively reduces our lifespan, simultaneously deteriorating environmental conditions which effectively reduces the lifespan of our species collectively;

It is illogical to kill arbitrarily, nor with intent except in certain exceptional circumstances whereby it benefits the species collectively;

It is illogical to bury the dead;

It is illogical to lie because lying produces further complications for the benefit of ultimately irrational purposes;

etc.

There are no morals. There is only logic.

Replies would be appreciated. Contention is welcome. Avoid logical fallacies.

*DISCLAIMER* This post is inevitably wrought with ultimately fallacious arguments, albeit subtle and not immediately irrational, which have not been explained for convenience. I encourage you to point them out. After all, being human is inescapable. By extension, fallacy is inescapable.

Morality AFAIK is a topic in meta ethics; and philosophy; I was suggested Ethics by Julia Driver as a primer on the topic by someone studying it.

As far as flaws in divine command morality go, here's a reliable one from the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson http://www.skeptic.ca/Biblical_Ethics.htm

The word you are looking for is "irrational", not "illogical".

Illogical denotes a literal contradiction or other logical issue in argumentation. Nothing that exists or happens is illogical, only concepts or arguments are (i.e. self contradictory or fallacious/invalid). Actions can not be illogical.

Actions can be inconsistent (e.g. a disagreement between beliefs and action), or counterproductive (a disparity between stated goals and effect), but that's irrational, not illogical.

As to morals, you're wrong on that point, but not wrong about religion for the most part. Morals have existed as a concept of good vs. bad action aside from religion for as long as philosophy has been properly structured and logic understood by humans.

Religion does not have a monopoly on morality. There's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Watch Sam Harris, on the moral landscape.
Read about Utilitarianism.

These are imperfect formulations, but they get at the point that there is such a thing as more rational and objective morality.

If you want a decent society then you need morals. Without morals, things will get messy. This is why morals exist. Actions are moral if they make you and the people around you happier. If they cause pain and suffering then they are immoral. Simple as that.

[quote="Sean_353"]

It is illogical to bury the dead;

It is illogical to lie because lying produces further complications for the benefit of ultimately irrational purposes;

etc.

quote]
No, burying the dead served the function of keeping away predators that might scavenge the corpses. It also helps with keeping disease and bacteria at bay.

Lying is an important social construct. Would you lie to save someone's life? It's a complex issue. An interesting study too.

Sean_353 wrote:There are no morals. There is only logic.

The irony is that you have made a few statements that are essentially moral evaluations of situations in non-moral therms, and by doing so clouding your meta-ethics to the point where meta-ethical objections can not be formed. It seems you want to go on to conjectures about moral actions without first dealing with problems of moral epistemology. You also seem to bite off far more than you can chew in some of your first statement.

Sean_353 wrote:Morals are extremely diverse among equally incoherent and logically fallacious religions and cannot be factually defined. They cannot even be described as that which is most optimal within a closed system, both because "optimal" is equally undefined, and because morals are not generally founded upon reason within a given society.

You are attacking two very different meta-ethical methodologies, first divine command theory, in which case I agree with your conclusions be it for different reasons. However I don't think your conjecture on the optimal solutions is a valid criticism.

If what you mean by optimal is utilitarianism, which is a broad school of thought, wherein the best moral action is the one that maximizes utility. It is correct to say that utility is not clearly defined, but that is because there are subclasses within utilitarianism that define it differently. Such as; classical utilitarianism wherein utility is happiness, preference utilitarianism wherein utility is fulfilled interest's, and welbeing utilitarianism wherein utility is (surprise surprise) the welbeing of thinking creatures. There are also sub-classes that differentiate in other ways, such as negative utilitarianism wherein positives are given little weight compared to negatives, rule utilitarianism wherein what produces the most good in most situations provide rules for how we ought to live (some formulations break down into act utilitarianism), and act utilitarianism wherein the right action weighs utility on the basis of the specifics of its situation.

As you can see the field of ethics is broad, and this is utilitarianism alone, and attacking various schools of thought in the area of ethics only proves that we don't have the right answer, not that ethics is subjective, irrational, or arbitrary. Just as disproving evolution would not prove intelligent design, as ID is a separate conjecture all together. So is ethical subjectivism. If you would like to explore the field of meta-ethics and basic logic (which you seem to already know a decent amount about) than there are great resources for free on the web, (although basic). such as this great game http://www.kongregate.com/games/ChiefWa ... hilosopher

Good post Bobo,

bobo0100 wrote:Just as disproving evolution would not prove intelligent design, as ID is a separate conjecture all together.

In this case, it's more like pointing out that different evolutionary biologists disagree with each other about certain details of evolution, and claiming that therefore evolution in general is subjective and not a true fact of reality.