[MD] Flying Spaghetti Monsters

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Ben [Arlo, Platt mentioned] --

> Morality is a word that I've had great difficulty understanding
> in general.  It's generally defined by philosophers as a field that
> answers the question "what ought I to do?" and is the same
> thing as ethics.  The problem appears when people start to
> (blindly) assume that it's universally agreed that certain things
> are moral/immoral.  Behaviors like rape, murder, theft,
> prostitution, gambling, etc. are just said to be immoral and
> anyone who disagrees is said to be an immoral person.

You have defined the moral enigma very well, and it explains why I am a
moral relativist.  If we all knew "what we ought to do" as an absolute
maxim, the "good" person would be one who followed the maxim, and the "bad"
person would be one who rejected it.  This would be a straight-jacketed
morality system in which the only choice would be whether we want to play by
the rules or not.  To my thinking, that would make a mockery of "goodness"
and restrict the meaning of Value to objective standards like the price of
oil.

> Now Pirsig doesn't make these assumptions; he says that
> morality is the same as quality and his explanation of quality
> is so broad as to make any of these acts, if analyzed from a
> certain perspective, perfectly moral.  The decision to murder
> is often a good/moral one from a biological framework,
> though rarely from a social or intellectual one.

This is why civilized societies adapt a code of morality to allow the
pursuit of individual interests, so long as one's behavior does not offend
or
injure others or the society as a whole.  Typically this is some version of
the Golden Rule, supported by local laws and regulations, and including
penalties for violators.  Propriety and morality can then be judged on the
basis of conformity to the law.  Laws are an effective way to control social
behavior, but they do not define "goodness" or "evil" in terms of individual
intent or "sensibility"; that is, they don't promote or discourage greed,
generosity,
avarice, compassion, deception, intolerance, or cheating.

> The principle I most often identify with the popular definition
> of morality is the intellectual pattern of altruism.  Rape, murder
> and theft are easily shown to be inaltruistic.  With prostitution
> and gambling, the case is slightly weaker, which fits with the fact
> there's greater ambiguity these days as to whether these behaviors
> are immoral.

A behavior pattern may be judged moral or immoral by public consensus, just
as human actions may be legal or illegal under the law.  In a society whose
participants and law-enforcers are irresponsible, self-indulgent, or
anti-social, moral ambiguity becomes a persistent problem which can
eventually lead to its collapse.  Again, since the moral code of a society
reflects the values of its individual members, the key to averting this kind
of disintegration is to instill moral virtues in the youth of the society.
Personal responsibility should be learned in the home, and if parental
values are not instilled in the younger generation, they will ultimately
disappear from society.

> So for Arlo's claim that blindly following a social instituion will
> lead to immoral behavior, I'd like to replace immoral with inaltruistic.
> I'd like to free up the word immoral to mean low quality, but I can't
> do this if it means something else.  As an example, I believe it's
> immoral to burn cookies.  It's not that it's inaltruistic--no great harm
> comes from burning cookies the way it does from murder or stealing
> a car--but it's immoral in that it's a low quality thing to do.
> Now I can say that blindly following a social institution is itself
> often an immoral action.  Not because of the consequences of
> following any given order, but because by blindly following, I
> cut off my ability to find dynamic quality, which is a high-quality
> thing to do.  But blindly following is not inaltruistic, unless I'm
> following inaltruistic orders.

The fallacy of altruism is the notion that there is a moral duty or
obligation to always act in the interest of others.  This notion runs
counter to Individualism, which is why Ayn Rand not only rejected altrusim
but challenged the idea that any act could be considered purely altruistic.
Evidence of altruism in Nature has been claimed by biologists, but recent
analysis indicates that this is caused by the dominance of certain genes in
species exhibiting this behavior.

> I'm not trying to distinguish between altruism and morality
> so as to attack altruism.  Altruism is a dominant part of modern
> morality and has been so since the rise of Judeo-Christian values.
> I'm not going to argue, as Platt or Ayn Rand might, that altruism
> is wrong.  (I'll address this below)  But I also don't think it's the
> whole of morality and I think it's important to distinguish
> between the two.

I agree with your analysis, but take a different moral position for the
following philosophical reasons:

1. Because man values his own life above all, it is the nature of man to be
selfish.  Therefore selfishness cannot be immoral.

2. Altruism implies paternalism -- the assumption that the individual knows
the interests of others better than they do themselves.  This fosters
dependence on the part of others and works against the altruist's natural
self-interest.

3. As applied to society, altruism establishes an artificial morality which
reduces   individual motivation, minimizes the value of his contributions,
and stifles development of his sense of moral goodness.

4. Man is a self-determinate creature with the freedom to choose the values
by which he lives.  Since morality is contingent upon related conditions, a
"fixed" behavior-based morality system thwarts individual freedom.

These points are demonstrated in your debate with Arlo.

> [Arlo]
> Should soldiers obey orders they find immoral?  If no, how can they do
this
> and still be "blindly obedient"?
>
> [Ben]
> Without any definition or morality, or of value, I'd say that soldiers who
> value highly the army they serve will follow the orders, but soldiers who
> place greater value on other patterns, be they intellectual or biological,
> will disobey orders.
> Now if you replace immoral with altruistic, which is a reasonable
> perspective from which to gauge the morality of an action, I'd argue that
> soldiers should obey orders that ARE altruistic, not orders they think are
> altruistic.  When a soldier obeys an order to commit suicide or rape a
> village girl, I don't care what he thinks, he's acting inaltruistically
and
> I, as an altruist, condemn his action.
>
> [Arlo]
> If you want people to "blindly" obey the law "do not rape", what happens
> when/if the law changes? How will they know to disobey? Or should they
> continue being "blindly obedient"?
>
> [Ben]
> Now this becomes easy.  An sufficiently altruistic soldier would not rape
> regardless of orders.  Likewise, a soldier who blindly follows orders
> would not rape so long as his commander is sufficiently altruistic.
> Arlo seems to argue that case 1 is the only viable way to prevent
> inaltruism.  Platt and I seem to think case 2 is a more easily achieved
> alternative.
>
> [Arlo]
> Has any nation ever existed that has NOT issued an immoral order?
>
> [Ben]
> Again, I'd like to replace immoral with inaltruistic.  Otherwise, my
> answer is a quick no, since there are a great many things I consider
> immoral but not inaltruistic.  Now as to whether any nation has never
> issued inaltruistic orders, I'd also answer no, although I'm really not
> too sure about the Federated States of Micronesia.  If you're asking
> about Rome and Greece and the Ottoman Empire, they were highly
> inaltruistic.  They didn't even value altruism.  I believe that in Book II
> of the Iliad, Nestor makes a long speech about how the Greeks
> should not go to war, which resonates as an altruistic argument.
> All the other soldiers laugh at him.
>
> But your argument seems to extend so as to say that so long as blind
> obedience occurs, inaltruistic behavior will take place.  You point out
> that this has occured in nations A,B and C and that therefore it's
> bound to happen in nation D.  But if nations A,B and C didn't value
> altruism, while nation D does, it's not really a fair assessment.  Put
> specifically, the United States is a country that values altruism much
> more highly than ancient Greece or Rome or 17th century France or
> England or Nazi Germany.  Blind allegiance was present in all these
> places, but they also lack altruistic values, at least to the extent they
> appear in the United States (or other modern Western nations).
> So blind allegiance has a much lower likelihood of leading to
> inaltruistic action today in the States than it did in Nazi Germany.
>
> [Arlo]
> You appear to be suggesting that people "blindly obey" laws/orders
> YOU believe are "moral", but suddenly become disobedient if ordered
> to do something you also find immoral. On what basis should they make
> that determination? Why should they, in other words, "blindly obey" an
> order "not to rape", but suddenly possess the critical awareness to say
> "no" when ordered "TO rape"?
>
> [Ben]
> This analysis is almost identical (though opposite) to what I saw as your
> position.  You seemed to suggest that by encouraging people to not
> "blindly obey", they would become disobedient if ordered to do
> something you found immoral (ie inaltruistic).  But that they would
> continue to obey laws/orders you believe are "moral" (ie altruistic).
>  I just meant to illustrate that it cuts both ways.

War and its destructive acts are immoral by the standards of Western
Civilization. However, I think you've both overlooked the necessity of
warfare to defend a nation.  An army cannot effectively achieve its mission
if every soldier has the option of refusing to carry out his orders.  The
head of government holds the moral responsibility for waging war and is
usually the 'supreme commander' of military operations.  If you've had
military experience, you know that individual soldiers are not free to act
on their own moral standards.  Those who do are derelict in their duty,
which is why we don't send conscientious objectors into battle.

Interesting post, Ben.

Regards,
Ham