This is a sloppy summary of my own viewpoint, Tim: subject to be changed at any time.
It is a simple matter to believe that morality is behaviour which is not dictated from outside the human experience. How we "ought" to act is always a matter of interpretation. Always a matter of THOUGHT and FEELING...dynamic, personal, and biased.
Take cows, for instance: There are differing opinions as to whether or not it is "good", or moral, to eat cows. But what if the cows had guns and knew how to use them? What if cows were able to express their self interest, and to threaten yours? Do you think that cows would not have similar rights as we do in such an instance, including the right to verdant pasture land?
Morality cannot be divorced from the self interest of those considering or exercising it. Sometimes, the "self interest" involves the imagination of one or more parties in a supernatural being. Of course, this will affect the amount of power, control, land, etc. which the parties feel entitled to claim, or to kill for.
Morality, for the last person in the universe, would simply be whatever she wanted it to be. PERIOD. She could masturbate--or not; she could bang her head against the rocks or chew sand pebbles. Nothing she did would be good or bad except as she wished to define it based on her independent thought and feeling. If she wished to imagine a supernatural being watching her masturbate, she could certainly decide that she was being bad. The fallacy generally made in examining such reductio ad absurdum scenarios is in begging the question of absolute morality, and in examining the question of what is "good" from that imaginary point of view. Morality is not considered from outside the mind. It is an interpretation which comes from people, or any other entitiies able to consider and express their self interests.
Sometimes, one hears an absolutist "argument" in a form such as this: but surely killing 6000 people in the WTC is evil. Who could disagree with this? Well, other than the fact that a whole bunch of bastards do because of their supernatural moral belief system, the point has nothing to do with addressing the question of absolute principles. The fact that most people can agree that a PARTICULAR instance of mass killing was either a "good" or a "bad" killing does not change the fact that killings can be either "good" or "bad", depending on the consensus interpretation of those making the interpretation based on their thoughts and feelings.
Morality involves compromise--and the accommodation to mediate self interests. It only makes sense in the context of "interested" and "affected parties...and these parties are never stagnant: they are dynamic, changing, and always in continuously new relationships to the totality of their environment.. So what makes any particular action better or worse, in the moral sense, simply depends, depends, and depends...
Naturally, humans have such similar biological, economical, and sociological similarities, that one is not surprised to find that common interests, "pack" alliances, and co-operation have created similar self interests and similar values within various groups of people--as in sects, political parties, countries, etc.
Does this mean that people cannot "BELIEVE" in ABSOLUTE values? Well, I suppose not; but why would they?? People change. There are no absolute people; so who would absolute values be for. Over millions of years our biology has changed. What was "good" to eat, etc. Is no longer the same. And, of course, it was never other than relative to individuals and groups. Likewise, with what is "good" in terms of behaviour.
It is the good of people, that people are concerned with: the good of people as they see it from their individual and group points of view, as to their self interest; not the good of the square of the hypotenuse. What is "good" for people simply depends, depends, depends.
"Good" killing is "good". Bad killing is bad. Killing is just killing. "Good" sexual intimacy is "good". Bad sexual intimacy is bad. Sexual intimacy just is.
Telling a "good" lie is "good". Telling a bad lie is bad. Telling a lie is just telling.
Telling the truth is just telling the truth. As Shakespeare said: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
There is no doubt in my find that Shakespeare was correct. However, feel free to imagine a God who was incapable of recognizing the fact that the needs of people are individual and change dramatically over millions of years, and over milllionths of seconds.... |
