Moral disqualification
When we look at the world, most of the problems originate from conflict between living organisms. Even the conflict that arises between organism and environment is often sustained by pettier conflict between organisms. In not just human affairs do we see this; a lion killing an antelope is a necessary event for the lion's survival, but most of us find this to be sad regardless.
Because of this, I believe that to a certain extent, all conscious entities (thus morally-responsible entities) are morally disqualified. What we commonly see as moral actions - giving to charities, helping the hurt, etc - are second-order acts of benevolence. Even these actions themselves can cause friction between the desires and their appropriate actions of ourselves and others.
It follows, then, that the "good life" is not the most "moral" life exactly, but rather the least "immoral" life. For we all screw up. We all cause tension between people. We all halt the desires of others while maintaining our own. And yet we can't help it, either.
Because of this, I believe that to a certain extent, all conscious entities (thus morally-responsible entities) are morally disqualified. What we commonly see as moral actions - giving to charities, helping the hurt, etc - are second-order acts of benevolence. Even these actions themselves can cause friction between the desires and their appropriate actions of ourselves and others.
It follows, then, that the "good life" is not the most "moral" life exactly, but rather the least "immoral" life. For we all screw up. We all cause tension between people. We all halt the desires of others while maintaining our own. And yet we can't help it, either.
Comments (7)
Quoting darthbarracuda
There have to be both moral lives and immoral lives for us to know that there is a difference. I propose that we are not always immoral, even least immoral, all the time. We are often moral, occasionally immoral; more and less moral, more and less immoral.
Quoting darthbarracuda
"All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, everyone one in his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
No, we can't help it, because we are part of nature. While we do not each seek exclusively our own good, we do and we must take care of our own needs once we are able. (Unlike lions, though, we tend to cull as much of the herd as we can get our claws into, to our long-term disadvantage.)
Although, I think that drawing a clear line between our "reason" and our "emotion" is problematic.
To reference David Hume:
"Moral distinctions are not derived from reason ... Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action"
(Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)
Hume also said that reason is a "slave of the passions", i.e. it merely puts into practice morals derived from elsewhere. This leaves us in a quandary if we are to claim that morals are derived from reason.
With respect due to the great David Hume, what he said can only be the result of his reason putting 2 and 2 together regarding its relationship with the passions. Like someone once told me, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize it and Hume's succinct pronouncement marks this first step, as a Jedi once said, towards bringing balance to the force or, if all goes well, eradicating the Sith who feed off of passion.
It almost comes down to a "chicken and egg" problem, haha. What came first: reason or emotion?
Personally, I would say that emotion comes first.
Let us take the example of a calculator which, by today's standards, is a very basic computer. Nonetheless, it can represent the activities of the human brain. We can put whatever we want into that calculator. We could input millions of sums. But in the end we will only choose 1 sum out of those many many possibilities.
My understanding is that our conscious thought processes work the same way. There are millions of possible thoughts. But only 1 will emerge from the brainy ether. What determines that is an emotion, which is provoked by unconscious thought, which in turn is provoked by an external stimulus.
Well, we're supposed to be the brand-new species, just 2 - 3 million years old and there's a reason I suppose why the primitive parts of our brains are labeled reptilian.
Quoting afterthegame
This doesn't seem to add up especially if you consider what you said above. If emotions precede reason, how can thought/reason be the link between emotions and external stimuli.
I have a theory though and it requires the notion of degrees of reason. This is a must if we're to accommodate the fact that emotions are essentially reactions to stimuli, whether physical or mental, and thus have to be reasoned to at some point along the process from stimulus to emotion. In most animals, there's just that amount of reason necessary to transform a stimulus into an emotion but in humans, there's a whole lot more of reason and that makes us susceptible to/capable of translating a greater variety of our experiences into emotions. In short, it appears that, contrary to what I've been saying, emotions in humans, due to how well we can reason, are more complex, or perhaps, more accurately, more complicated.
But then again we have the small matter of emotions being, till date, unprogrammable on a computer. Making a computer logical is, quite oddly I must say, the easy part. Is reason really the more advanced part of the human brain? If yes, why is it so easy to physically replicate on a machine? If no, then emotions can't be primitive or reptilian. All this assuming evolution is moving in a direction from the simple to the complex.