Interesting name for this forum

[shakushinnen]

Hi,
Are we agreed then, that the basic requirement for having a moral, ethical, code, is knowing right from wrong? (I'm not sure I'm able to make that distinction.)
John

 

[Sauna]

Yeah, they have to be breathing AND they have to have a driver's license. In some states, they don't even have to have a driver's license. Whhooopee-dee-doo ...truly qualified alright!

Yeah, that really, really narrows down the field of potential jurors, don't it?!

Did I get it wrong?

Not so long ago you wrote that "it's my contention that all humans know right from wrong", as if you might as well be tried by a lunatic.

Now you want them to be qualified?

How many cases are tried by Juries?

In Europe the vast Majority are tried by local Magistrates, a job opportunity not completely open to anybody with a driver's license.

 

[Baron Max]

Baron Max, How did the humans survive for so long without them, then?

Why do you think they didn't have a complex system of laws and rules ...even as lowly cavemen? I, personally, think that they did. I also think that humans simply could not have survived in even remotely large groups had it not been for some form of laws and rules.

It doesn't make sense to me that humans couldn't survive without written laws and weapons to back them up, yet we survived for many years without such things.

Laws didn't have to be written down on parchment to still be laws! And I think even you'll agree that humans had weapons almost from the day they began to walk upright!

I'll also say that if it makes no sense to you, then you're welcome to your belief. I know of nothing to proof my point ...other than the first beginnings of writing, you find the beginnings of laws and rules being written down. To me, that means that those laws and rules were easily instituted long before anyone knew how to write.

Baron Max

 

[Baron Max]

Are we agreed then, that the basic requirement for having a moral, ethical, code, is knowing right from wrong? (I'm not sure I'm able to make that distinction.)

I would have to say 'Yes'. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that that's the end of it.

the first human smacks the second human on the head with a big club. The second human says, "Damn! That hurt like hell! Don't do that no more!"
And the first human says, "Hmm, okay. Hell, I didn't know that would hurt so much. I just want to get your attention." And thus the first rule/law was made and agreed to; Don't hit your buddy in the head with a big club!

But notice that law didn't say anything about hitting someone in the leg! So, they extended the law to include the leg. And it went on and on until finally it included the whole body.

Ahh, but then when a bunch of enemy humans came along, the first two humans were restricted by their agreed laws and so didn't fight back. They were captured and enslaved. And after a few years of captivity, they decided to amend the origninal law to EXclude any enemies! See how complex things can get very rapidly?

To me, one can't talk about ethics and morality and laws, etc without a basic understanding of the base, VERY BASE, system ...and build up from there. Talking about ethics of the modern world is sorta' like discussing the entire pyramid while completely ignoring one of the tiniest and first chunks of stone that makes up the damned pyramid.

Baron Max

 

[Sauna]

Why do you think they didn't have a complex system of laws and rules ...even as lowly cavemen?

Do you know what, Baron?

That is how I always picture you, wrapped in an animal skin with a club in one hand, like Fred Flintstone.

 

[Baron Max]

I disagree. A human can imagine what its like to get hit on the head themselves (knowing it hurts), so it stands to reason they would expect a fellow human to dislike it too. This experimental "lets see what hurts, and if it does, I wont do it anymore" doesnt seem right.

Was that true, though, in the earliest humanoids? See? You're making a giant leap of faith ....and you have no evidence for it. In my view, the early humans were little more than apes that happened to walk sometimes on their hind legs and use the hands for picking up stuff. That ain't the imagine of a highly philosophical animal, is it?

Baron Max

 

[Baron Max]

Do you know what, Baron? That is how I always picture you, wrapped in an animal skin with a club in one hand, like Fred Flintstone.

None of us are very far from that, Sauna. Only your overblown ego keeps you from admitting it.

Baron Max

 

[Tiassa]

Oh, what a dreadful mess!

"Ethics, morality, and justice" - three human inventions that don't exist in any other realm of nature.

Ethics, morality, and justice are part of what make humanity human. There are several approaches that spring to mind:

- Star Trek: In one or another Star Trek film, a Klingon mocks the phrase "human rights" as an unfair reservation to species. The question arises, "What aspects of a species qualify it as deserving of these rights we reserve to humans".

- Battlestar Galactica: In an episode of the SciFi Network series, Dr. Baltar muses to his phantom partner, Number Six, about watching fish swim upstream to spawn. In mundane, terrestrial terms, it can be said that "rights" don't matter much to the salmon. They are born, they swim around, they beat themselves against the rocks, get laid, and die. And we don't hear them threatening to strike over worker-safety conditions, lack of smoke breaks, healthcare benefits, &c. Should we applaud the salmon for avoiding these human traps? Or do we just accept that salmon are salmon?

- Religion: Various religious philosophies assert that dignity (and the rights that ensure it) are bestowed by God, and that notions such as ethics, morality, and justice are determined according to divinity.

- &c., &c.​

Stephanie Coontz, in her recent book Marriage, A History, turns away from common presumptions that marriage was a means of marking property. While a wife may indeed have been her husband's property, the custom has served far greater human-social needs than marking territory and ownership. These days, such a marriage would be seen as unnecessarily complex when you can just piss on a fencepost. And, yes, we tend to ridicule men who look at their wives so exclusively. (I mean, what else is the Jerry Springer show good for?)

Ethics, morality, and justice may be products of the human endeavor, but it's hard to call these things "inventions". At no time did any of the concepts simply come into being. At the time of, say, Plato's Ethics, it was not a matter of inventing a system, but rather of documenting what exists and determining the reasons why.

And that's where the whole thing gets messy.

 

[shakushinnen]

Hi Tiassa,
So, I'm not sure where you're comming down here. Are you saying that ethics, morality, and justice are, or are not, practiced in other animals, aside from humans?
P.S. I don't see humans as having any inalienable rights either, aside from what society bestows on us. (But that's a topic for another post.)
John

 

[Tiassa]

(Insert Title Here)

Are you saying that ethics, morality, and justice are, or are not, practiced in other animals, aside from humans?

I don't see them considered in the same form. I agree that ethics, morality, and justice are concepts seemingly unique to humanity, but view them as symptomatic of the human condition. Perhaps I'm fixating to firmly on the implications of the word "invention". Nonetheless, it's what jumped out at me.

P.S. I don't see humans as having any inalienable rights either, aside from what society bestows on us. (But that's a topic for another post.)

I believe in the validity and reality of inalienable rights, but these rights are derived from the demands of nature and human capability to claim, espouse, nurture, and protect rights.

Some rights I would claim for humans are simply infeasible. We haven't the tools to develop and secure those rights.

 

[shakushinnen]

Hi Tiassa,
........Perhaps 'invention' wasn't the best choice of words. I simply meant that, from what I can see, other animals don't seem to display what I would interpret as ethics, morality, or justice.
".... view them as symptomatic of the human condition."
Interesting observation. Would you mind elaborating?
John
P.S. I will start a post on the 'inalienable human rights' thing. There may be several people who would like to weigh in on this.

 

[one_raven]

Why do you think they didn't have a complex system of laws and rules ...even as lowly cavemen? I, personally, think that they did. I also think that humans simply could not have survived in even remotely large groups had it not been for some form of laws and rules.

Laws didn't have to be written down on parchment to still be laws! And I think even you'll agree that humans had weapons almost from the day they began to walk upright!

So, really not a whole lot different than what social animals (such as other great apes) seem to have then, right?

 

[Baron Max]

So, really not a whole lot different than what social animals (such as other great apes) seem to have then, right?

I don't fully understand your question? Could you elaborate?

Baron Max

 

[Sauna]

None of us are very far from that, Sauna. Only your overblown ego keeps you from admitting it.

I'd thought that the blow job was was the moderator's job.

 

[Tiassa]

Nyarlathotep

Would you mind elaborating?

The concepts of ethics, morality, and justice--especially justice--are at once a vital part of what makes us human in and of itself, and also a product of our evolution. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I believe it similarly disdains excess: nature is not extraneous. While the mere ability to consider concepts such as these may be merely a byproduct of our brain size and structure combined with the living conditions of the human endeavor, that result has borne spectacular, eye- and mind-popping effects, and also managed human progress. Consider the saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And juxtapose that with the idea that the U.S. and other nations have nuclear arsenals capable of an extinction-level event. That we haven't reduced the species to an archaeological record is one of the benefits of abstract ideologies such as morality and justice. To the other, that we haven't settled human morality beyond the question of having wars about it is a testament to our ignorance. Whether or not we intend it, the "myths", as such, of ethics, morality, and justice do have a restraining effect, and at some point we can argue that the restraint is, in the context of species, accomplishing something positive.

The concepts of ethics, morality, and justice are at once products of evolution and tools to shape what share of the future species the crawling chaos affords.

Evolution may not be pretty, but it is, in a way.

I don't want her; you can have her. She's too fat for me.

South Park, #503
click, oh, say, here
​

 

[shakushinnen]

O.K. Thanks Tiassa,
So you would say that these concepts (justice, ethics, morality) are somehow hard wired into us? (I don't want to put words into your mouth.) I must admit this is an idea which sounds foreign to me. (That's not to say it couldn't be the case.)
I've been reading a book called 'Inner Work' which is based on Jung's Archetypes. I 'think' it suggests something similar to what your suggesting. To me though, this sounds very much like the transmission of learned characteristics, that Mendel or Darwin (I think) discredited. Are you suggesting that the propensities for justice, ethics, morality, I guess right and wrong too, are somehow in our genetic codeing? If so, is there any evidence to suggest this is the case?
John