From: solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Subject: Re: Free Will and Morality
Reply-To: solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Organization: University of Oslo, Norway
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 18:28:41 GMT

David Spurrett writes:
|>Morality is concerned with principles; principles of character, principles
|>of what is right and wrong, good and evil, admirable and base.  Morality is
|>about _value_.  It is about what _should_ and should not be the case, or be
|>done by anyone with moral awareness.

Except for the last sentence, which seems to make the definition of
morality more or less self-referential, I accept the above definition
of what is in general meant by "morality".

However, by which standards are "right" and "wrong", "good" and "evil",
and all the other principles evaluated?

Part II: Let us consider an action evaluated according to a certain
standard to be one that I "should". What the heck is supposed to motivate
me to do it in the first place, if not that I have an INNER drive to
perform this action?

If morality is to be more than a game of words including "wrong", "right",
"good", "evil" and "ought"\"should", we clearly need to get a connection
between the inner drive and the moral command\advice. 

So, if morality is not describtive in the sense of advising on what we
ought to do if our inner motivation is to be satisfied, whats the use?
For me, an "its your duty" moves me no more than "its a crow".

|> >I propose, again with my favourite philosopher Stirner, that
|> >we drop all illusions about morality as something existing
|> >apart from our own bringing it into the world. We might as
|> >well dissolve the idea of Morality when it no longer is what
|> >we want.
|> 
|> Huh?  What do you say `we' want?  Who is `we'?  What is morality now?
|>_HOW_ do we `dissolve' the idea?

For me, morality is a set of rules guiding my conduct, and more generally,
a set of rules for evaluating something. However, as I am not fooled by
the grandmotherly trick of equating "bad" as for me with "bad" as defined
by some religious voodoo-master, or philosopher for that sake, I no
longer have the inner motivation to follow a morality just for the reason
that it draws on the paralell between "good"\"bad" _for_me_, and "good"\"bad"
in the abstract sense.

Morality is just a set of guiding lines tieing back to "good"\"bad"
_for_me_. When it comes to a situation in which the moral advice no
longer serves its purpose, namely that of benefitting me, I just
dissolve it, i.e. take away its moving power, sever its link to my
action.

[This was the short version. My morality tells me not to write down
 the long one, as it takes too much of my valuable time, while not
 being worth it.]

|> >When we still retain Morality, it must be because we find
|> >some reason to let it continue its existence. Bu
|> 
|> How about it's impossible not to retain it?  What more reason do we need 
|> than that? What about the question of its being a matter of the true 
|> understanding of the world?

[I see a lot of my message is lost.]

How should it be impossible not to retain it?

Also, as Hume showed, with a certain view of reason, reason cannot be
what moves into action. If reason says "Goddammit! If I dont run now,
I will die" after a [short] analysis of the situation, it has produced
an excellent syllogism, but no MOTIVE for running, unless some other
agent with moving force catches this, and does not want to die.

Note!: The above partition of the mind is only tentative.

Note2: I do not subscribe to Humean "moral sense", as I do not have it.


Regards, Solan
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.politics.libertarian