Free Will and Morality

I apologize if something like this has been done before.

I had a discussion a while back with a friend about free will and morality, his argument was that unless we accept the existence of an objective standard of morality then moral action is entirely meaningless as no one action is better than any other.

As someone who gravitates toward radical freedom and subjectivism, I contended that if we were to accept an objective/unerring standard/source of morality then moral action wouldn't be moral at all as it would simply be adherence to an external code of conduct and would shirk off the responsibility of making one's own moral decisions.

An interesting notion I've come across in Existentialism is the idea that every action a person makes is creating an image of the world as he thinks it ought to be, and every time someone makes a choice and thus changes themselves they are creating an image of man as they think man ought to be. This adds some Universalizability and Prescriptivity without appealing to an objective, absolute value/fact/truth/code.

Thoughts?

If there was an strict code for good, every other action given a certain time (going left, going right, doing something else, doing nothing) would be considered bad.

But they aren't clearly the same kind of bad. If good is going right, going left is more "opposite" than going foward. And again, doing left doesn't have the ability to "undo" the moving left if it ever happened. So whether or not there is an absolute code, you could still build the basis of morality given freedom, the ignorance of said code and simply the possibility of it's application.

I don't think having a moral code would mean you couldn't have moral actions just because you have a set definition of morality.

Even if you accept that morality is built by humans, don't we already have a moral guide that tells us killing is wrong and rape is wrong? Aren't we still following a sort of "guide" on what is right or wrong, even if we, as humans, had a hand in creating it?

Originally posted by Omega Vision
As someone who gravitates toward radical freedom and subjectivism, I contended that if we were to accept an objective/unerring standard/source of morality then moral action wouldn't be moral at all as it would simply be adherence to an external code of conduct and would shirk off the responsibility of making one's own moral decisions.

People have constructed personal moral systems they consider to be objective. Objectivism, for example.

Actually its pretty much all moral systems I think. People looked at the world and decided what was right and wrong. Other people followed them, sure, but they started as personal objective systems.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
An interesting notion I've come across in Existentialism is the idea that every action a person makes is creating an image of the world as he thinks it ought to be, and every time someone makes a choice and thus changes themselves they are creating an image of man as they think man ought to be. This adds some Universalizability and Prescriptivity without appealing to an objective, absolute value/fact/truth/code.

I don't see Prescriptivity there which is my bare minimum for relevance as a moral system.

It has no real power to advise that I can see. If I ask the question "what should I do?" the only answer I can get from this is "what you want to" which is useless, because I'm only asking the question because I want to be moral and don't know how.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
People have constructed personal moral systems they consider to be objective. Objectivism, for example.

Actually its pretty much all moral systems I think. People looked at the world and decided what was right and wrong. Other people followed them, sure, but they started as personal objective systems.

I don't see Prescriptivity there which is my bare minimum for relevance as a moral system.

It has no real power to advise that I can see. If I ask the question "what should I do?" the only answer I can get from this is "what you want to" which is useless, because I'm only asking the question because I want to be moral and don't know how.

Essentially "act as you think man ought to act", don't do any act that you don't think ought to be something all men should do. You're right, in the sense that it would depend on the individual in question having some conscientiousness.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
I apologize if something like this has been done before.

I had a discussion a while back with a friend about free will and morality, his argument was that unless we accept the existence of an objective standard of morality then moral action is entirely meaningless as no one action is better than any other.

As someone who gravitates toward radical freedom and subjectivism, I contended that if we were to accept an objective/unerring standard/source of morality then moral action wouldn't be moral at all as it would simply be adherence to an external code of conduct and would shirk off the responsibility of making one's own moral decisions.

An interesting notion I've come across in Existentialism is the idea that every action a person makes is creating an image of the world as he thinks it ought to be, and every time someone makes a choice and thus changes themselves they are creating an image of man as they think man ought to be. This adds some Universalizability and Prescriptivity without appealing to an objective, absolute value/fact/truth/code.

Thoughts?

I completely agree. A while back I made a thread discussing this same subject:

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/f80/t556045.html

Or, more precisely, if you accept an unerring code on the authority of its source, I don't think you are being moral at all; you would have just as easily done the opposite, if the authority had said that. There is no shame in taking advice on morality from learned figures, but ultimately the choice has to be yours alone, based on what ideas you think make sense.

I myself, would have the greatest skepticism towards any moral system that claims to be absolute. I know how rare absolutes are even in the fields of science; how much more fuzzy something like ethical theory is. I know in science, all theories are strictly provisional; it seems only sensible that you would take that same attitude towards morals (that it is a provisional theory, that we should be open to improving with new observations).

Originally posted by King Kandy
I completely agree. A while back I made a thread discussing this same subject:

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/f80/t556045.html

Or, more precisely, if you accept an unerring code on the authority of its source, I don't think you are being moral at all; you would have just as easily done the opposite, if the authority had said that. There is no shame in taking advice on morality from learned figures, but ultimately the choice has to be yours alone, based on what ideas you think make sense.

For instance in the dilemma of a student who came to ask him whether he should go to England to join the Free French Forces to fight the Nazis or stay with his sick mother Sartre told him "choose, invent"

Very unhelpful perhaps, but then Sartre was never about helping people so much as trying to tell it like it was.

Originally posted by King Kandy
Or, more precisely, if you accept an unerring code on the authority of its source, I don't think you are being moral at all; you would have just as easily done the opposite, if the authority had said that. There is no shame in taking advice on morality from learned figures, but ultimately the choice has to be yours alone, based on what ideas you think make sense.

That almost seems like a distinction without a difference. How often do you find people who follow a moral system that they disagree with because of the authority of the source?

People going to skull for many years, working their _sses off until they are old, hoping to one day live to sow the fruits of their work, fully knowing that might not happen.

Originally posted by Bentley
People going to skull for many years, working their _sses off until they are old, hoping to one day live to sow the fruits of their work, fully knowing that might not happen.

Many of these people will defend the system rather than view it as immoral. The rest have no choice or believe they have no choice so it isn't a moral issue for them at all.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
That almost seems like a distinction without a difference. How often do you find people who follow a moral system that they disagree with because of the authority of the source?

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
That almost seems like a distinction without a difference. How often do you find people who follow a moral system that they disagree with because of the authority of the source?

That's pretty much any person, ever, that followed a religion.

I find it impossible to even find inventors of their own religion to follow everything they invent in that religion (if we presume God does not exist and was the source for that religion). If you can find a single person that says they agree with 100% of what is in their religion/moral code, I will find you a person that is unaware that they disagree with some of it.

Originally posted by King Kandy
I have constantly had Christians tell me that even if the morals of the religion make no sense to me, I should follow them based on the authority. You will hardly see a case like you said; they will rationalize, "even if this doesn't seem right, the problem is on your end". I have seen this same sort of line being used constantly, i'm surprised you haven't.

Fair enough. It's almost always been my experience that either there are reasons or I am lacking the needed higher understanding that they have.

Originally posted by dadudemon
That's pretty much any person, ever, that followed a religion.

I find it impossible to even find inventors of their own religion to follow everything they invent in that religion (if we presume God does not exist and was the source for that religion). If you can find a single person that says they agree with 100% of what is in their religion/moral code, I will find you a person that is unaware that they disagree with some of it.

In my experience people's reaction tends not to be that "I disagree with this part of my moral system" and more "I think this means something else than you do", though I'll admit I don't have a very broad base of experience for this. A surprising number of religious people seem to violate religious dictates due to not knowing them in the first place but I'd say that doesn't count.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Many of these people will defend the system rather than view it as immoral. The rest have no choice or believe they have no choice so it isn't a moral issue for them at all.

There are people who constantly mix morality with legality though, a heavy argument can be made about personal morality and acceptance of a social system as go-to examples of higher authority.

I'm still confused as to why following a moral guide is not really being moral. If you learn from your parents and society in general that, say, saving someone from a burning building is moral, aren't you still following a moral rule that you did not invent or figure out for yourself?

Even if the person doesn't understand or even disagrees with the idea of saving someone from a burning building. Would we say that person didn't do anything moral if he saves someone from a burning building?

Originally posted by TacDavey
I'm still confused as to why following a moral guide is not really being moral. If you learn from your parents and society in general that, say, saving someone from a burning building is moral, aren't you still following a moral rule that you did not invent or figure out for yourself?

Even if the person doesn't understand or even disagrees with the idea of saving someone from a burning building. Would we say that person didn't do anything moral if he saves someone from a burning building?

For instance, if someone only refrained from murder because the Bible prohibits it and really saw nothing wrong with murder in of itself and/or didn't care for the negative consequences of murder then I wouldn't say he was being particularly moral in not committing murder, just being observant to a rule.

As for your example, I would personally call the act commendable, but whether it's moral is another matter that depends on the person's motives. Doing it out of a sense of duty or in the name of greater utility or because the Bible says so doesn't strike me as particularly moral, more like leaning on a preset guideline to make decisions.

Now (and yes I'll mention Sartre again for the zillionth time ha_ham ) Sartre did admit that most people will necessarily choose to follow some pre-established code, at least to some extent. The thing is that in his view none of these codes were self-justifying and none of them were absolutely action-guiding in the sense that the person applying these codes was at freedom to interpret them and apply them in their own way.

I certainly do believe that some acts are better than others, but I can't really account for that by making any objective value claims more than "I feel this way". In that sense I suppose I'm sort of in David Hume's camp.

A moral action in my view is one in which a person makes a decision to act a certain way that creates a more idealized normative perception of humankind than an alternative action, and in the process of making this decision does not attempt to appeal to authority (like King Kandy said) to justify it.

Pretty much every time I do something immoral its immoral because I know I'm doing something that projects an image of humankind that's inferior to what I believe humankind should be like. The same goes for when I see other people do things I consider immoral. In this same sense, if I could read the mind of the man saving the people from the burning building and I heard that he was only doing it for fame or to follow a code, something that didn't require him to consider what humankind ought to be and only appeal to nebulous codes then I would think less of him as if he did it because he believed that --independent of any appeal to "moral" authority or social contract or anything like that-- it was what he should do in the current situation.

I'm not saying that a Christian can't be moral, Tac. Or that following what your parents teach you can't be moral. I'm saying that blindly following those codes without any independent consideration/invention isn't really all that moral.

For an example, if you have two scenarios involving grenades thrown into foxholes and in both scenarios one soldier throws himself onto the grenade to save his comrades both acts would be considered heroic sacrifices. But if in one case the soldier only does it because he is given the order to do it and were the order not given wouldn't have done it and in the other case the soldier does it because he wants humankind to be ready to sacrifice themselves to save others then i would say that while both soldiers are deserving of praise for courage/loyalty, one is doing something moral and the other is not.

Originally posted by TacDavey
I'm still confused as to why following a moral guide is not really being moral. If you learn from your parents and society in general that, say, saving someone from a burning building is moral, aren't you still following a moral rule that you did not invent or figure out for yourself?

Even if the person doesn't understand or even disagrees with the idea of saving someone from a burning building. Would we say that person didn't do anything moral if he saves someone from a burning building?

If someone disagrees with saving people, but does it because they will get some reward, then I think they are nothing to be admired; they are just a sheep doing whatever their boss tells them, and we should be glad that it was their boss who had good moral sense, for the man himself had none.

Under the situations described about, what is the stimulation of morality?

Even in Christian theology there is a point in which Pablo bashes the sense of morality, he basically argues that we don't do the right thing because it feels right. By the same token, many of the people who are taught into a moral code get a physical discomfort from breaking their code, while somebody whose code is designed over the years can be quite apathic about it, gut wise.

Also I'm a little puzzled about the wording referring what "humanity should do" from a moral standpoint. It just seems a very burgeois way to put it, since only someone who is born into money can easily abstract the humanity as some ideological entity. In a certain way, killing a person while being poor is more moral than killing a person when you're deeply depressed. But mostly, I don't understand the point of basing a personal morality around a social abstraction -if I'm understanding this correctly-.

Originally posted by Bentley
Under the situations described about, what is the stimulation of morality?

Even in Christian theology there is a point in which Pablo bashes the sense of morality, he basically argues that we don't do the right thing because it feels right. By the same token, many of the people who are taught into a moral code get a physical discomfort from breaking their code, while somebody whose code is designed over the years can be quite apathic about it, gut wise.

Also I'm a little puzzled about the wording referring what "humanity should do" from a moral standpoint. It just seems a very burgeois way to put it, since only someone who is born into money can easily abstract the humanity as some ideological entity. In a certain way, killing a person while being poor is more moral than killing a person when you're deeply depressed. But mostly, I don't understand the point of basing a personal morality around a social abstraction -if I'm understanding this correctly-.

I'm not up to date on the jargon of modern ethics theory but as far as I can tell none of that makes any sense.

Who is Pablo, for starters?

Very interesting