Religion and Morality

agis

Secondly:
when I assume a moral/ethical attitude…

in my opinion language could be instead of great help in denoting the underlying mind activity. This because all the human languages of this planet know an unambiguous verbal form named Imperative…

James! Kiss my lips (right now)!! :cool2:

this would be the purest and the harshest of the forms but, since we are tortuous and complex animals, we could also choose a sweeter and enveloping approach:

Jaaamiieeee, hoooneeyyyy would you kiss my lips right nooow? :hug2: :cheesy2: ( :fight: )

Do it like you want, this imperative puts the subject getting it in the classical aut-aut: an unbreakable binary alternative.

It is true she/he might play for time: Nooo, I'm sick, I've forgotten my appointment with the dentist…

But in the end the answer cannot be anything else than a yes or a no. You might now have noticed the imperative makes on its own a thing many of us here deem as very important even from a sexual point of view: the discipline! :police:
At this point James of course will be disciplined answering yes and undisciplined answering no.
When we forget that, in this kind of situations, the imperative was a causating prius (the thing which came before and created all the situation) and we start instead to think to it as a posterius (a thing coming after) to be derived from the situation, in my opinion there we get the good/bad and the moral/ethics with all their differences and difficulties due to the fact that in vain you will search in an "after" what was there instead before. ^-^

So said pastol what you say is not wrong because it is obvious in different periods or spaces of our personal story or of the whole mankind history the ethical/moral rules/precepts may change but this shouldn't be a problem cause the moral/values/ethics depend on the prius and can never be derived from the facts (the posterius). A little practical example and de hoc satis for now.

I could slightly complify my imperative:

James! Kiss my lips right now otherwise I will spank you!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
James! Kiss my lips right now otherwise I will not spank you!! YEEEEEEEEEEEES! :cheesy2: :cheers: :cheesy2: :cheers:

myrea

Pastol, I used war as contrast but you might have subtler adaptations like prejudice as an example, people very usually bend morals or adapt them, the important is to have a stable core and you would function even with an unstable moral core, and well the "normal" well normal as in average… I shiver to think what statistics might tells us about society average moral; but yes one thing are thought another is action, I understand your train of logic.

Agis Piaget studies based on his kids are a tad to biased since the upbringing has nothing to do with the average upbringing, however theoretically it's interesting. And my guess is that he was thinking pleasure (libido) = good and destrudo = bad... rather crude I know, I wonder what Jung would think? :blink:

Mainly religious thought is arched by a pretense of spiritual path which is allegories and rites which explain the mythology, so it's dogmatic and fixated and more in an alter "superego" proxy (God), meanwhile ethic thought relies on doubt cinycal philosophy and questioning of reality phenomena, so it's more flexible and relatable to the "individual ego" I.

I :love: this topic

agis

@myrea:

Agis Piaget studies based on his kids are a tad to biased since the upbringing has nothing to do with the average upbringing, however theoretically it's interesting. And my guess is that he was thinking pleasure (libido) = good and destrudo = bad… rather crude I know, I wonder what Jung would think? :blink:

He let alone Lacan et al. myr :hot2: Better to automoderate me otherwise Dax will spank us all and that one is a big bear :crazy2:
Good objection again though myr bias and poverty of the sample. Piaget can be considered as a pioneer though and he doesn't compare with the other ones for a number of reasons imo.
Moreover I could find a couple of arguments more for a disagreement between his thought and mine but we would really end off topic there. If you know him well you could open another topic and I will follow you as far as I can :hug2:

Dax

@agis:

Better to automoderate me otherwise Dax will spank us all and that one is a big bear :crazy2:

No need for automoderation, agis! But in case anyone needs a good bear spanking, just call! :fight:

agis

@Dax:

No need for automoderation, agis! But in case anyone needs a good bear spanking, just call! :fight:

:crazy2: :crazy2: noooooo noooooo don't spank poor ol' ign… ahem innocent agis mole !!!

let's fuck instead!! :cheesy2:

butt just a moment ???

agis

No, really I don't understand how you can be so elusive surface mammals ;D. Anyway after this failed attempt of "against nature" ( :hehe: ) intercourse between the yummy young dax bear and the ol' mangy agis mole, to the original Jamie's question I would answer summarizing:

Religion and moral are 2 different things cause we originally make them differently with our mind activity using then, coherently, 2 different words to denote them.

We make religion/dogmatism choosing a not commonly/generally shared point of reference which, once chosen, has to be left untouched as is adapting all the "becoming" to it.

We make moral with the initial emisson of imperative(s) whose foundative statute gets lost engendering as a consequence the impossible attempt of going to search it/them amongst its/their consequences.

Once made this way these 2 different attitudes, nothing forbids and, as a matter of fact,it has been very often done, to mix and to make them overlap.

Very often, for instance, the religious/dogmatic attitude has used and still uses the moral attitude for the build up of dubious but compulsory precepts I'm sure, for our personal stories, we all know more or less. In this case we willingly denote this constructs as "moralism".
So said though the myr's and pastol's considerations are not devoid of validity cause the consequences of series of imperavites can be checked more or less consciously against other kinds of attitudes (for instance an historical attitude), recognised useful by a majority and, as a consequence, deemed as a Moral with a capital M.

agis

wrong post sorry should go slower in writing mpf pth

Spintendo

@agis:

Personally I'd consider those reactions as lead by this opening pleasure more than an awareness of a good and right which, in themselves, could even not exist at all. Right?"

The fact that 80% of these infants demonstrated some kind of feelings towards the "helpful" puppets as opposed to the "unhelpful" puppets may indicate an inherent attraction towards these helpful behaviors concomitant with an inherent dislike of the unhelpful behaviors. As people are mostly attracted to things which are pleasing to them, your observation would naturally be the correct one.

Since feelings form the foundation of all moral thoughts — and all babies have feelings (they laugh and cry) — this Yale study may say something quite profound about the origins of human morality.

agis

@Spintendo:

@agis:

Personally I'd consider those reactions as lead by this opening pleasure more than an awareness of a good and right which, in themselves, could even not exist at all. Right?"

The fact that 80% of these infants demonstrated some kind of feelings towards the "helpful" puppets as opposed to the "unhelpful" puppets may indicate an inherent attraction towards these helpful behaviors concomitant with an inherent dislike of the unhelpful behaviors. As people are mostly attracted to things which are pleasing to them, your observation would naturally be the correct one.

Since feelings form the foundation of all moral thoughts — and all babies have feelings (they laugh and cry) — this Yale study may say something quite profound about the origins of human morality.

No Spinny I think the foundation of moral is simply the imperative. Then so said of course,starting from that, you can build upon and introduce feelings or other kind of possible constructions including the possibility the imperative can be found in an ex-post objectivity thanks to the intervention of deity/ies. If moral was based upon the feelings this kind of statement couldn't resist to all the counterfactuals concerning the numerous cases when feelings have not dictated and still don't dictate moral but immoral behaviours :).

myrea

@agis:

No Spinny I think the foundation of moral is simply the imperative. Then so said of course,starting from that, you can build upon and introduce feelings or other kind of possible constructions including the possibility the imperative can be found in an ex-post objectivity thanks to the intervention of deity/ies. If moral was based upon the feelings this kind of statement couldn't resist to all the counterfactuals concerning the numerous cases when feelings have not dictated and still don't dictate moral but immoral behaviours :).

And that is basicly what happens for many reasons, before all the imperative and action-reaction develpoment are known to come after the emotional response development, you hit a baby he/she cries and he/she does not know yet what is reflection in mirror or that an hidden object has not vanished from existence, this has been studied in the babies psy and explains most of the psy disturbia like mental illness also, morals are a concept and immorality lies inside it because it's only an adaptation of regular morality, the hormonal core, the emotions core (limbic system) is older than the logic core (lobes) in the brain, and your hypocampus are actually worked up to save memory emotionally, what happens in the maturity of a mind is that your superego (conscience) the logic core, refreins your ego (emotional needs) the limbic, in order to maintain social moral as pertained by the developped imperative… however this is by no means a peacefull conflict, or else we wouldn't have mental illness, actually the ego and the limbic are so powerfull that most of the times you know you are making things wrong and illogic and you blame it on hormones...and there lies a whole million dollar question why is it so easy to bend moral, if not because the imperactive actually is taking birth and operating in an emotional perspective or mainframe. Other Question is the mental preposition of the psycho and sociopath there the cut of emotional connection create an associal imperative... so I suppose we would have to find a consensus to all psychic disturbia and trauma to be logic, in order to find the birth of morals in the human psy.

agis

@myrea:

@agis:

No Spinny I think the foundation of moral is simply the imperative. Then so said of course,starting from that, you can build upon and introduce feelings or other kind of possible constructions including the possibility the imperative can be found in an ex-post objectivity thanks to the intervention of deity/ies. If moral was based upon the feelings this kind of statement couldn't resist to all the counterfactuals concerning the numerous cases when feelings have not dictated and still don't dictate moral but immoral behaviours :).

And that is basicly what happens for many reasons, before all the imperative and action-reaction develpoment are known to come after the emotional response development, you hit a baby he/she cries and he/she does not know yet what is reflection in mirror or that an hidden object has not vanished from existence, this has been studied in the babies psy and explains most of the psy disturbia like mental illness also, morals are a concept and immorality lies inside it because it's only an adaptation of regular morality, the hormonal core, the emotions core (limbic system) is older than the logic core (lobes) in the brain, and your hypocampus are actually worked up to save memory emotionally, what happens in the maturity of a mind is that your superego (conscience) the logic core, refreins your ego (emotional needs) the limbic, in order to maintain social moral as pertained by the developped imperative… however this is by no means a peacefull conflict, or else we wouldn't have mental illness, actually the ego and the limbic are so powerfull that most of the times you know you are making things wrong and illogic and you blame it on hormones...and there lies a whole million dollar question why is it so easy to bend moral, if not because the imperactive actually is taking birth and operating in an emotional perspective or mainframe. Other Question is the mental preposition of the psycho and sociopath there the cut of emotional connection create an associal imperative... so I suppose we would have to find a consensus to all psychic disturbia and trauma to be logic, in order to find the birth of morals in the human psy.

Yes myr these are all possible consecutive considerations imo. The possibility of seeing the moral problem either from a collective or from an individual point of view with all those social misfits many of us might have still experienced; the possible bonds with psy and neurophysiological considerations (even if we must admit that already a philosopher like Leibniz was not persuaded by them for a number of reasons). I would add besides, from an essentially social point of view, the juridical side of the moral where the good becomes innocent and the bad/evil becomes guilty. After all, much before the mankind could know anything about psy or neurophysiology, moral started to come into the limelight in the form of juridical collective imperatives like the so said commandaments or ancient codes like Hammurabi's. There you could think that already since those times , a selection of the imperatives series pushed its way for the necessity of regulating and damping the social conflicts between gropus and/or societies of improving complexity

Spintendo

@agis:

If moral was based upon the feelings this kind of statement couldn't resist to all the counterfactuals concerning the numerous cases when feelings have not dictated and still don't dictate moral but immoral behaviours."

Seeing cooperation as an evolutionary trait recognizable by infants suggests why all moral thought takes the form of feelings rather than rationally motivated thinking. Feelings are in the long-term more beneficial to us and to our concept of morality precisely because we have limited control over their emotional effects. This limited control introduces an element of unexpectedness to what we experience, and people invariably learn more from unexpected things in life than they do from the expected ones.

myrea

Spintendo the uncertainty fugue is a both sides card, it allows more possibilities as allows more ends, tho I grant that it's on an emotional and nonlogic mainframe of a baby so a good and valid hypothesis, however cooperation is not entirely supported by evolution actually in order to cooperate you brain process and overall capabilities get lower, as an individual people work better than in groups, however in order to build or live socially cooperation is vital, aniway food for thought.

Agis I won't go to judicial moral since for me law and rights are very far apart from actual justice or moral, they act as a very flawed proxy, there are more loop holes and unmoral laws even for the period which they belong, than I rather know or care about… laws can also be fairly unsocial and unpopular to be socially moral, law takes birth in control over property, I am still going around why there even exist some laws, and then you have this mayhem of morals the individual anarchism or the society dystopia.. it's chisms all around, what matters is where does morality has root on, and yes it shows on all this things, but that is the show, we want the mechanism... and we already know that is all around "we want this as a basis and we don't want this as a basis" because experience says so... but what more forms the process? I'm going for a combination rather than only a basic thing ( science tell us that easy and simple route is the right one, but science has been fucking that up a lot so I'm believing this to be fairly more complex) I wonder too if anyone cares to ramble upon the origin of religion eheheh someone needed a daddy figure?

agis

@Spintendo:

@agis:

If moral was based upon the feelings this kind of statement couldn't resist to all the counterfactuals concerning the numerous cases when feelings have not dictated and still don't dictate moral but immoral behaviours."

Seeing cooperation as an evolutionary trait recognizable by infants suggests why all moral thought takes the form of feelings rather than rationally motivated thinking. Feelings are in the long-term more beneficial to us and to our concept of morality precisely because we have limited control over their emotional effects. This limited control introduces an element of unexpectedness to what we experience, and people invariably learn more from unexpected things in life than they do from the expected ones.

Spinny!! :cheesy2: you have made me remember this so fine and romantic thing of my youth! :hug2:

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyBcHUe4WeQ

Feelings nothing more than feeeeeelings ….

But even in those times I had realized a thing: in respect with the same song I could put myself into different attitudes.

If I put myself in an emotional attitude it seemed to me the song was very close, sorta totally implemented into my subjectivity with exclusion of everything else.
But if I put myself into a rational attitude it seemed to detach and going back to belong to an objectivity where you could even deem it with some harsh adjective like mawkish or soppy.

So, what do you/I/we all do/make when we act/think in an emotional/sentimental way or in a rational way?

agis

@myrea:

Spintendo the uncertainty fugue is a both sides card, it allows more possibilities as allows more ends, tho I grant that it's on an emotional and nonlogic mainframe of a baby so a good and valid hypothesis, however cooperation is not entirely supported by evolution actually in order to cooperate you brain process and overall capabilities get lower, as an individual people work better than in groups, however in order to build or live socially cooperation is vital, aniway food for thought.

Agis I won't go to judicial moral since for me law and rights are very far apart from actual justice or moral, they act as a very flawed proxy, there are more loop holes and unmoral laws even for the period which they belong, than I rather know or care about… laws can also be fairly unsocial and unpopular to be socially moral, law takes birth in control over property, I am still going around why there even exist some laws, and then you have this mayhem of morals the individual anarchism or the society dystopia.. it's chisms all around, what matters is where does morality has root on, and yes it shows on all this things, but that is the show, we want the mechanism... and we already know that is all around "we want this as a basis and we don't want this as a basis" because experience says so... but what more forms the process? I'm going for a combination rather than only a basic thing ( science tell us that easy and simple route is the right one, but science has been fucking that up a lot so I'm believing this to be fairly more complex) I wonder too if anyone cares to ramble upon the origin of religion eheheh someone needed a daddy figure?

Well myr if we had to derive moral simply from imperatives I wouldn't see difficulties in admitting what you have written and the very thing that a moral/law is neutral with respect to a "justice" whatever we want to denote with this concept. If we still lived in Hammurabi's times we would be liable to the hands cut just for belonging to such a site and in commandaments succession the precept of god's sanctification comes much before the one prescribing to honour your parents ;D.
Concerning the origin of religion an interesting thing could be that historically the religious/dogmatic attitude has been made antecede other attitudes. Especially the scientific one. Tell me more about the daddy bit though ^-^

myrea

Hmm we have to consider the spectrum and range of emotions agis.. indifference and detatchment are very close to the anallitic point of logic however with different mechanisms, not that I'm going around logic as part of human emotions, I'm just wondering if you are not rather in the similitude of a more detatched perspective of Feeelingsss lalala than a logical analysis of the music and content, because even that analysis is based in a world of emotion written by and for that world… so that comprehension of romaticism is needed in it to be logical.

The Daddy issue is the curse of the most typical God, you want it to help you and you blame him when things don't work...

agis

@myrea:

Hmm we have to consider the spectrum and range of emotions agis.. indifference and detatchment are very close to the anallitic point of logic however with different mechanisms, not that I'm going around logic as part of human emotions, I'm just wondering if you are not rather in the similitude of a more detatched perspective of Feeelingsss lalala than a logical analysis of the music and content, because even that analysis is based in a world of emotion written by and for that world… so that comprehension of romaticism is needed in it to be logical.

The Daddy issue is the curse of the most typical God, you want it to help you and you blame him when things don't work...

Ok myr in this detached objectivity one could attribute ideologically negative values or even not values at all cause, for instance, in the music domain, we could take into account the simple study of a score for a performance which would leave apart , at the beginning, value considerations. You must not worry though I'm not totally devoid of emotions babe :hug2:. But a thing I was never up to was to live an emotional and a rational attitude together. When there was one of them it seemed to me I couldn't have the other one at the same time. Very interesting studies about these matters have been performed in the phisicalist field of the neurosciences by a renowned compatriot of yours, Antonio Damasio and this very thing had also raised the philosophical interests much before as he himself had to notice in his main popular works . Following this path would lead us elsewhere though. Back in topic I must admit that historical arrangement I had left you with has been commonly done/made by many authors but has never fully persuaded me. If we generally agree in attributing to the mind activity the physical place known as brain we must also acnowledge in the last 40000 and more years it doesn't seem to have undergone particular changes. I feel so easier to think that all our possible attitudes had to be already there indipendently from the historical,anthropological agreements. Btw myr, according to you, could it be possible for some not human animals to be religious/domatic or scientists? ^-^

myrea

@agis:

Ok myr in this detached objectivity one could attribute ideologically negative values or even not values at all cause, for instance, in the music domain, we could take into account the simple study of a score for a performance which would leave apart , at the beginning, value considerations. You must not worry though I'm not totally devoid of emotions babe :hug2:. But a thing I was never up to was to live an emotional and a rational attitude together. When there was one of them it seemed to me I couldn't have the other one at the same time. Very interesting studies about these matters have been performed in the phisicalist field of the neurosciences by a renowned compatriot of yours, Antonio Damasio and this very thing had also raised the philosophical interests much before as he himself had to notice in his main popular works . Following this path would lead us elsewhere though. Back in topic I must admit that historical arrangement I had left you with has been commonly done/made by many authors but has never fully persuaded me. If we generally agree in attributing to the mind activity the physical place known as brain we must also acnowledge in the last 40000 and more years it doesn't seem to have undergone particular changes. I feel so easier to think that all our possible attitudes had to be already there indipendently from the historical,anthropological agreements. Btw myr, according to you, could it be possible for some not human animals to be religious/domatic or scientists? ^-^

That felt like brain sex, first "Antonio Damasio" not only genius also a great guy, in the essay "Descartes error" raises the bigger issue of thanatos so in order to process all his reasoning in the range of the human core would take me so many shivers and orgasms… henceforth reverting to pop for a quick dose watch "evangelion" from Anno Hideaki or "ergo proxy" if you are a fan of Derrida, tho "ghost in the shell" might make you wet.

In the last 40000 years it hasn't change i's debatable, physiologically the main anatomy no, however synapses and neuropeptides or even chemics are basicly individual we have no way to tell if there has been retuning to deal with the info high we now live in. I recall that evolution also takes millions of years to make adaptations so don't rush it babe it likes it slow and deep.

"Btw myr, according to you, could it be possible for some not human animals to be religious/domatic or scientists?"
According to facts both the hormonal (reptilean brain) and emotional core (limbic system) and even lobes are present in animals, to go at it harsh science might tells us that they have an emotional core but I have no idea how emotions are processed in their lobes, and you have the observer issue you are interpreting emotions in other animals, they do have logic and reasoning, so your question would also involve if their shown emotions or behaviour takes birth in logic of the imperative, like a cat purring because you are giving it attention or food, and a dog barking because you are trespassing it's territory? That would leads us straight back to the puppy experience unfortunately human's can't read very well baby animals expression (we are very, very dumb you see not like moles). So are animals more rational or emotional... since we are an animal and we tend to the emotional side I say it's individual even in them... scientists pshaw who would want to be a scientist when you could be my pet? Religious/dogmatic non humans, all cat's are luciferian they love Crawley too, seriously I do not have the most remote idea if any non human is able to process the concept of an universal or groupal cogniscience like God, I think we stumbled upon that around the imperatives of survival, however since the universe is huge I would not bet against the odds.

agis

Ihihihihihihii It was quite an assist to you and Spinny speaking of Damasio wasn't it myr? ^-^ and no, I'm not a fan of Derrida: I don't like the dualists's elaborated smokescreens. In the French environment you could find very close to mine positions in the thought of the late Paul Valery but this is another story (or not?).
Back in topic though, it was an assist cause, more than what you have already remembered about Antonio, one of his main basic interests is and has always been the revaluation of the feelings/emotional side. Of course an impertinent mole could object to Antonio that the true problem doesn't stand in that revaluation but in understanding the weakness of all those approaches which make the man not the master but the slave of her/his own artifacts.
The problem for a scientist of the second foundation is not so to raise one of the possible human attitudes over the other ones but to understand instead how many could they be and how could they work. Btw myr and Spinny do you know whom Isaac Asimov was and his idea of a second foundation? ^-^

agis

@agis:

The problem for a scientist of the second foundation is not so to raise one of the possible human attitudes over the other ones but to understand instead how many could they be and how could they work.

Pth mpf poor ol'mole was forgetting ::). Once understood this kind of things, possibly finding them too in the so said "not human". How could you pretend to understand your doggies, your cats, the little babies who are not yet up to speak … if they are speachless? :hehe: