Secular Naturalism and my moral Dilemma.
Posted on: April 30, 2008 - 6:41am
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Secular Naturalism and my moral Dilemma.
For me Secular Naturalism seems to make the most sense of any world view apart from the Atheism that extends from. I think we are all the result of various factors in nature and there is no such thing as a mystical font of inner volition. It makes sense that the effect of a criminal would have the cause of biology and bad environment, but even knowing there is no magic way for someone already on the path of criminality, just where do we place blame?
To go beyond your limits you must first find them.
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It has to be on the person committing the crime. Anything else gets far too complicated. Unless you mean attempts to reduce criminalization by decriminalizing behaviours or pre-emptive social work (like ex-gangsters talking to kids in neighbourhoods about what a stupid fucking idea it is to be a gangster).
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
What is classified as criminality is itself simply a by-product of a social contract, and since this contract changes from environment to environment so too does the exact definition of a criminal. But there are few civil communities that do not have a social contract so the conditions whereby it is trangressed can be expressed generally. If a person commits a crime therefore it is invariably attributed to one of three causes or a combination of these.
1. The individual's responsibility not to break the contract was not understood by the individual concerned
2. The individual's responsibility not to break the contract was deemed less important by the individual than the benefit to be gained by breaking it
3. The individual's responsibility not to break the contract was deemed less important by the individual than their personal committment to a perceived moral principle in conflict with the contract's rules
In the first instance ultimate "blame" (I would prefer to say "the cause" ) lies with society as a whole in that the contract is not one that lends itself to adoption by all that society's members on the grounds of incomprehensibility. There are many reasons for this - the law is too obscure, the individual is not intelligent enough to understand it, the individual is too new to the society - but in all cases society, in the guise of its official channels of contract enforcement, must at least share responsibility for the transgression.
The second two instances confer complete responsibility on the individual, but in the case of the third instance the concept of individual morality comes into the equation. This is where you will find a lot of religious criminals, but it is also where you find those who break the law in order to improve the contract, and often accept punishment as individuals in the hope or expectation that this will contribute to changing the rules of the contract.
"Blame" therefore is a rather loaded term. It infers that the contract is always right - and as every homosexual, or black citizen, or anyone else who has been at the receiving end of bad laws knows, criminality alone is not the issue.
What I detest however is how the moral battleground on which such idealists are forced to fight to improve the contract for everyone has been traditionally usurped and occupied by people who, religiously motivated, hijack the area in order to propagate highly questionable agendas. They subvert the language of idealism and apply it to religiously sectarian programmes designed not to "better" the contract but to make it conform to their own narrow idea of morality. In terms of human advancement they are therefore the cancer, utter parasites within the body politic, at best retarding agents and at worst destroyers of humanitarian development and the advance to a society founded on civilized principles.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Be careful not to make an error of composition here. It's true that everything we do is on some level a result of factors beyond our control, including our genetics, upbringing, and current circumstances. However, you must also keep in mind that natural selection has given us a moral sense based on reciprocal altruism balanced with opportunism. We form societies because we're genetically programmed to do so.
Our concepts of good and bad are not real things. They are functional abstracts built into our minds by our genes and formed by our experience. Our society works because of a combination of individual emotion and social pressure. When we do something "bad" we feel guilt, which is self blame. This is not necessarily because what we did is objectively bad, but because our genes want us to live productively in society so that we'll reproduce effectively. Without guilt and blame, there is no emotional impetus to be altruistic when it would be to our advantage to be opportunistic.
In other words, it's correct that on a biological level, we can't escape our biology. However, our genes don't make decisions. Our brains do, and our brains function within the immutable parameters of guilt and blame. The hand we've been dealt includes the emotion card, and emotions are literally the glue that makes society work.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
And of course, on various levels, we are not without culpability concerning our environment. As my wife says, "We make choices, and we live with the consequences." If we are willfully ignorant of our options, we are just as culpable as if we made the same choice with full knowledge of the consequences. If we are accidentally ignorant of our options, then our culpability is mitigated to a certain extent.
Whether the concept of the misnamed "free will" is correct or not, our decisions affect our environment, for good or ill. So it's not as simple as saying we are a "product" of our genes and environment. Genes may define the limits of our abilities, and our environment may limit our accomplishments, but ultimately, we are responsible for our environment.
That said: considering that a good 30% of the US prison population is incarcerated due to "victimless crimes" (possession of pot being a big one), our US society is pretty damned quick to label people "criminals."
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
I would have phrased it as: the instinct to form a society is more beneficial to both survivability as well as offspring production as opposed the loner instinct.
Then how do you explain rapists who do not feel any guilt, whatsoever, for what they do and, in some cases, are proud? Surely they are doing the same thing as non-rapists, namely, reproducing. I am not arguing for an objective bad, I am just pointing out how living "productively" does not have to involve shame, guilt, or any other "moral" emotion or state of mind.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
I think it's fair to say that sociopathic behaviour isn't well understood. Understanding behaviour in terms of evolution is purely speculative anyway. It's an interesting discussion to have, but it can only be speculation.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
No, it's more than speculative, but less than certain. Sociopathic behavior is part of the superorganism. Rapists exist for the same reason that autistic people exist.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Modelling 'amoral' (re: socially destructive) behaviors is actually mind-numbingly easy. Let's take a look at the simplest example (murder):
We have the 'A's and the 'B's. The 'A's adhere to no moral restraint, each one killing another one every day. The 'B's adhere to excellent moral restraint, so no B kills another B.
We start each off with a population of 100 individuals. Every five days, half of both groups will produce a new population member (we'll also assume that nobody gets killed on reproduction days, to make things more favorable for A). What happens to the populations?
Day 0:
A=100
B=100
Day 1:
A=50
B=100
Day 2:
A=25
B=100
Day 3:
A=12 (maybe 13)
B=100
Day 4:
A=6
B=100
Day 5:
A=9
B=150
Day 6:
A=4 (Maybe 5)
B=150
Day 7:
A=2
B=150
Day 8:
A=Extinct
B=150
So? Which population group do you think performed the most successfully?
I believe there are a number of java applets out there that more or less model exactly the same thing, if you care to watch it. Without some level of respect for the lives of their own members, A can't even hope to survive on it's own - much less try competing with B.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940