Hi 1robin,
Thanks for the interesting exchange. Since the goal here is simply to understand each other, and not persuade each other (that would be a waste of effort), with your permission I'll only respond to a select few points that you made, where I feel my position needs to be clarified (though you will no doubt still disagree with it).
I think this is basically equivalent to something I saw last night. A scientist claimed that the natural laws explained the universe. The other guy said they explain the universe but they can't explain how the universe came to be. Descriptive laws can't produce anything. The equation 2 + 2 can't produce 4 elephants. I think you are describing ways that a desire can be explained. Once again descriptions do not produce anything. You may describe why you want to have free speech but that description can't produce a right to practice it.
No no, I am not explaining where a desire comes from. I just mentioned the evolution of things like dopamine receptors tangentially. My argument begins by observing that we have certain unchangeable desires (broadly, the desire to be happy). It is not necessary for my argument to explain where desires come from. If I discovered tomorrow that God actually wants me to be unhappy, or that aliens programmed my desires as a joke, or anything else was responsible for my desires, it wouldn't change fundamental facts about me: pizza is delicious, babies are cute, good health is preferable to illness and company is preferable to loneliness. This is just a fact about human nature (excepting the occasional psychopath). If instead of human beings we were some insectoid alien race from another planet, then we would desire different things .... perhaps the most meaningful and wonderful act imaginable would be laying down and being devoured by the queen. As it is, we are human and have human desires. This fact is the starting point, from which the rest of my argument follows.
1robin said:
BTW why "should" I prefer a some sum game instead of a zero sum game if humans are simply biological anomalies with no worth?
Well if you are not a normal human, a true psychotic, and at the most fundamental level you crave wasteful self-destruction, then there is no reason you "should" respect others' rights, except perhaps to avoid imprisonment. If it were otherwise, then we wouldn't need laws, and police. However, I suspect that when you look inside yourself carefully, like most people, you discover that it is a fact that you value humans, whether or not they are "biological anomalies". Suppose you became convinced to your complete satisfaction tomorrow that humans are "biological anomalies". Would this instill in you some irrational desire to throw the nearest baby off a balcony? Or decapitate the closest 5-year-old girl? I doubt it, but if so, I sincerely fear for your sanity. The rest of us, in any case, have perfectly good reasons to not only respect others' rights, but to enforce respecting said rights on you, too. I note that nothing short of force--not God's existence, nor arguments therefrom--is sufficient to protect society from such psychopaths. This fits nicely into my (naturalistic) worldview, but presents a confounding puzzle for the theistic view.
1robin said:
Well that was refreshing. You would perhaps be very surprised how inconvenient but obvious issues like this will be refused to be seen. Another I always find funny is that evolution is claimed perfectly able to produce every benevolent behavior possible but entirely unable to produce the more consistent with "nature, red in tooth and claw" but inconvenient behavior.
I completely agree. Evolution is definitely capable of instilling evil desires in us, such as enjoying the murder of enemies. But one of many problems with that kind of desire is that it leads to zero-sum games. Intelligent, rational beings with foresight and the capacity to control their desires (to some extent) should, if they want happiness, try to control their desires in such a way as to play positive-sum games, e.g. cooperative games.
1robin said:
You are right a fight is the only result. The point I made and I think you understand is that if that fight is justified that justification will have to be found outside moral relavatism. Your system will exhibit few failures for a moral individual or group, the cracks will only appear when large societies filled with moral conflict and Biblical type (evil) are examined or sufficient justification (not explanation) is mandated. I have really enjoyed our discussion and will make sure and remember your forum name. Most of the time I find quickly that I am not debating facts or even logic. I am debating preference and desire against which facts and reason have no effect. I think you may one of the few exceptions.
Thanks, I also enjoyed our exchange. I'll leave the last word to you, and end with one last point in response to this.
I would say that a fight between good and evil (e.g. the police and a serial killer) is justified, to the only extent possible, and in the only way meaningful. In my worldview, I concede that there is no ultimate or absolute justification, nor any infinite regress of justification-for-justification-for-justifications. It's only justified to the extent that the fight is in accordance with facts about human happiness, and reasoning therefrom. You could argue that God would take this justification and make it even more justified, but I would respond that you are simply invoking a miracle to make your argument superficially seem stronger. The lesser justification based on Nature in my argument is sufficient, and more meaningful because it's based on real things and reason, rather than imaginary things and dogma. What I will say is that, because the justification in my argument rests on facts which an entire society/species has in common (not just me), and because I can't choose which facts are true nor which reasoning is sound, this justification for morality does indeed "transcend" the individual. This justification does not transcend facts and reason and Nature, I admit. It doesn't need to, and in fact we ought to immediately doubt any argument which claims to do so.
A telling example, as I recall, occurs in Mere Christianity, where one of the first examples C. S. Lewis used was WWI. He said that using human reason alone, no one could say that Great Britain was in the right, and Germany in the wrong. Only by invoking something "beyond" facts and human reason could one rationalize the self-evident truth that WWI was justified, and Great Britain was on the side of good, Germany on the side of evil. How revealing it is, i.m.o., of the complete emptiness of his argument that something most of us recognize today as a tragic waste of young lives could be rationalized using C. S. Lewis' supposedly superior, divinely-guided moral reasoning. It is revealing that by appealing to some imaginary, ultimate, objective source of morality, Lewis succeeded in rationalizing immorality based on his own human bias and subjective patriotism, and making his immoral convictions more immune to rational criticism.
