From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 10:19:18 MDT
[Kharin] There have been various objections to the concept, of which this is a pretty feeble example. More serious are the points that gay rights (which seemed to be the model as far as Dawkins was concerned) was concerned with establishing equality with the rest of society, something echoed by Dennett. However, equality seems an uncertain agenda when displacement of religious ideologies is also a concern. Another point, was that the notion of naturalistic ethics runs afoul of the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that an ought cannot be inferred from an is.
[Hermit] Perhaps "gay rights" rather than "establishing equality" should be seen as establishing "that which is good", where "good" as usual, covers a multitude of sins (happiness, equity, rationality, etc)? In which case, this objection is, I suggest, logically superceded by the next and superficially at least, more rationally founded objection.
[Hermit] I say, "superficially", because I never really liked Moore's arguments on the 'naturalist fallacy'. They seem to me to leave us reliant on an apparently not biological and thus sourceless, non-verified and non-verifiable "ghost in the machine" supposedly providing us with a noetic sense of "goodness of ought" - unless we irrationally decide that "ought" has nothing to do with "good" and simply accept the "oughts of consensus" without evaluation (in which case I would argue that we are not competent to be "good" and when we disagree with the consensus (as "gay rights" did and in some places still do) we have no grounds for our rejection of the imperative of the majority) [See [ "Hermit, "Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics", 2002-03-06 ] (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=32;action=display;threadid=11557).
[Hermit] As I suggested in [ Hermit, "Virian Ethics: The Soul in the Machine and the Question of Virian Ethics.",2002-03-05 ] (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=32;action=display;threadid=11530): 3.1.3 (...) [We should not differentiate between] Questions of the classes of "why do we do?", and "what ought we to do?". I suggest this largely because it is difficult to achieve conviction that there is a meaningful line between them. We work the way we do for many reasons and have conceptions of what we ought to do which are very much related to the way we function.(...)
3.1.4 (...)[We should attempt] to discover a biological justification for the establishment of a general principle and then extending from this into more specific systems until an ethos, which we can agree is rational, has been developed. The areas where we have difficulty may then be explored and restricted until we isolate areas of difficulty and can examine them clearly. This would clearly conform to the Descartian principles of investigation.
[Hermit] In other words, a pancritically rational positivist or even purely empirical approach to the question of "what ought we to do" leads inexorably to the "what is it good for us to do", and I argue (and suspect Dennet takes the same approach) that "being happy appears to be good" and thus, if we "seek to do good" then, "we ought to do that which appears to make us most happy." Being fundamentally social creatures, this suggests that we "ought" also to do those things which will make our associated hierarchy happy or at least, which minimise unhappiness. Aspirations which arguments for "equality", "gay rights" and "brightness" all appear to share - but, which, being based in UTism, conventional dogmatic religion does not.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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