h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

but have our morals gotten "better", because it seems that centuries ago all the europeans were really mean to each other and stuff...?

maybe there's moral evolution, biological evolution, and technological evolution. It seems possible that if so the technological evolution does not coexist very well with biological evolution

Most people won't agree with? I assure you Azahar, a blanket morallity is a necessity, and I don't care if anyone believes, or argues. I care about the truth, and the facts are, there is not much difference between any human on an evolutionary level. The Nog is right, we are all products of the same evolution. We have been handed down the same instinctual blueprint for survival. I say again that there is far to much suffering at this point of our evolution, yet we have the intellect to change that. I ask how an evolved human being can have any question about what is right our wrong. I propose that we take a look at our own potential, and do something. The fact that we are having such difficulty evolving is our own ignorant and arrogant ability to claim whatever best suits ourself as truth, but there is a real universe out there, that has no conscience or arrogance, and will go on evolving with or without us.

Still not entirely convinced you're not just doing this for controversy...
To have a blanket morality would take away one of the mainstays of our individuality. What do you mean, you don't see how a human being can question what is right or wrong? I believe in my views, and I am happy in the hypocrisy that it is right to kick those who annoy me, but not for others to kick me. Doubtless you disagree. I believe that it is right to have individual ethics. You obviously disagree. You may think that it is "right" to think that it is "wrong" to have the first view, and "right" to think that it is "right" to have the second. In fact, I happen to feel that those who feel that blanket views are a good thing are blindsighted, authoritarian, unindividual, conservative scumbags.....
... or is that just me trying to be controversial?

probably

but sure we can think what is right and wrong. technically though unless some higher being actually exists, the only good that comes from doing right is other people with think better of you. good and evil are not things that matter to the physical universe

>> I ask how an evolved human being can have any question about what is right our wrong. >>

I ask how they cannot.

You care about the truth? And which truth might that be? Your own version from the sounds of it. Well, good luck with it.

az

It is no more possible to have a *purely* individual ethics than it is to have a *blanket* ethics. If my ethics had nothing in common with anyone else's it wouldn't be an ethics, it would be... something else. No ethical discourse would be possible, and there would be no such thing as ethics.

Noggin

ethics have to be related to other people's ethics, otherwise we wouldn't call them ethics ?

Yep.

On analogy with Wittgenstein's "games".

Noggin

I haven't heard of taht but I think I know what you mean anyway...

> but have our morals gotten "better", because it seems that
> centuries ago all the europeans were really mean to each other and
> stuff...?

You think things have improved in recent centuries, or even the last 50 years? Where have you been?

I would say that there can be neither blanket ethics nor completely indavidual ethics. Blanket ethics, as Fnord points out, would take away part of are indaviduality and there is no basis for them without a higher being.

If you want to claim that evolution supplies us with ethics, then I have a point to make. Logically, if evolution supplies us with ethics, then those species most related to ours ought to have the most simialar ethics. Well, let me see--chimpanzees and humans are the only species to practice genocide, so this must be part of our evolved ethics. Thus, you are positing a blanket ethics that allows genocide if you posit that our evolution supplies us with a blanket ethics.

On the other hand, Noggin is right that an ethics followed by only one person is not ethicsl, it is a personal code.

Ethics-philosophy wich treats of human character and conduct, of distinction between right and wrong, and moral duty and obligations to the community.

All this really means is "treat others how you would want to be treated"... It really has nothing to do with the meaning of life, only with making life easier for all of us.
I think; the truth is that we made up everything around us. Evolution taught us to adapt to our surroundings and situations accordingly. Now that we've improved such tools as fire; and made it readily accessable, and the wheel; into four wheel drive, we have nothing left to adapt to. All our worlds problems are to blamed on having nothing better to do... There's not much left to improve, and so we turn our thoughts and hearts to the stars and the heavens. We all seemingly forget that we are just animals, equipped with big brains rather than claws or fangs. Perhaps there is no meaning. Maybe it was all a big accident...

Sorry, that was a little off topic...
But anyway, Isn't right and wrong taught?
You learn the difference between right and wrong from parents and school. Were I raised by wolves I'd believe it was good to eat weaker children and fight with anyone who's not family...

"If a lion could speak we would not understand him." Wittgenstein

It's because human nature includes a capacity for violence, as well as for cooperation, that we have rules about it.

Noggin

hi Noggin,

<>

Well, yes, and also we live in human-created societies. And we could not live together without some sort of ethical concept. But within that people can also create their own personal ethics, don't you think?

I don't see social-based ethics as a 'blanket ethic' concept. They are based in whatever society one happens to be living in. Later, the individual can create whatever personal ethical idea that suits them best, within the larger social one they are living in.

Though I'm not convinced that I wouldn't understand a lion if it chose to 'speak' to me.

az

I think we're only talking about a minor difference of emphasis/expression here, az.

Yes, in one sense everybody has a personal ethics, but the "rules of the game", so to speak, have to be held in common. What's individual is interpretation and prioritisation when elements of the rules contradict each other, or when new circumstances or possibilities arise.

Noggin

Well, I think that was what I was saying, Noggin.

That we live in a society with a social ethics concept, yet we can all individually, within that that concept, decide on what is ethically correct for ourselves. We don't need to buy the whole package of what is considered ethically correct by our particular society to live a life based on our own personal ethics.

Or am I wrong?

az

>> Were I raised by wolves I'd believe it was good to eat weaker children...<

Had you been raised by wolves you'd know better. The healthy fat ones have more flavour and nutritional value.

Welcome to h2g2 Researcher 247946.


~jwf~

>> "If a lion could speak we would not understand him." Wittgenstein <<

Lions can speak.

And until the advent of zoos we understood enough 'lionese' to keep things in perspective:

They be King of Beasts and don't make very good eating considering the trouble involved to harvest them.

And we be Crown of Creation, kill what we will, when we will, just for fun and our never-ending 'scientific research' !

Anyway, nowadays one wouldn't want to know what they are saying about us.

~jwf~