i believe in functionalism

This post was edited by YaC on Dec 14 2014 07:45am

no ethics is doing whats least harmful or most beneficial (or knowing i suppose)
- Ethics, sometimes known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct, often addressing disputes of moral diversity.

morals are the absolute statement of what is right and wrong objectively
-Moral, founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom:
moral obligations.



you do not sound stupid at all, i would say most people do not know the difference, and even the ones that do know the difference, will still quibble constantly over what moral objectivity even is or if it is even a real thing.

you seem to be invoking the kalaam cosmological argument, but i am not sure why, nobody said everything needs a cause, and a god is not needed for morality to exist, its possible that "the right thing" is always the right thing regardless of a gods input (as well as the possibility for an immoral god). Morality is a philosophical construct, like sexual orientation (does your sexual orientation necessarily have to be physical for you to have one?).

if you want to visualize morality try to visualize the way things "ought" to be (nobody said it was easy), and now visualize all the actions it would take to create thst perfect society, that is morality. Now is there some people that are still unhappy in your perfect society? (then right and wrong would be subjective and this is why we need ethics)

e: example of a moral and ethical conflict: I enjoy fighting, but hitting someone is wrong, if i find a friend who enjoys fighting with me are we immoral? (if yes, right and wrong are objective and me and my friend are assholes. If no, then right and wrong are subjective and we are just doing what we think is right, there is no real quantifiable answer one way or the other, it just a matter of opinion)

This post was edited by dude_927 on Dec 14 2014 03:28pm

^"and now visualize all the actions it would take to create thst perfect society, that is morality"

slightly bad wording, "perfect society" is already there, imagine the types of things these people can and cannot do to each other, not the process of creating the society (also typos, sorry i get lazy when im not being marked lol)

This post was edited by dude_927 on Dec 14 2014 04:10pm

Its not. Choice or even predisposition to morality affects whether you live, die, or reproduce so it entirely does.

Morality is nature's entropic attempt to get us to try to get the most utility per person out of the limited resources around us, or conversely to prevent suffering. It gives us an edge against animals that don't.

yes, thats helpful to get a clearer picture of morality



I believe constructs like sexual orientation are physical.


if i think of heterosexual orientation as something physical, than it would be a certain type of brain structure and connectivity of neurones, with a certain type of firing. If the brain structure or the firing of the neurones is altered at the right places and in the right way than sexual orientation will change or dissapear.

sexual orientation is a construct but this construct is the result of matter and energy (brain matter and electrical firing of neurones). When I think of what heterosexual orientation is, I think of a naked women, the light enters the eye, gets processed in the brain and creates a picture in the occipital lobe, the view is activating certain parts of the brain and causes the release of certain hormones and neurotransmitters. the neurotransmitters firing in the addicting and pleasure centers of the brain leads to the attraction towards the woman.

is it ever morally acceptable to rape someone? (forcing them to reproduce should increase the "utility per person", shouldn't it?)

now the term makes sense.

For the record, altruism is most definitely an evolutionary construct, and there is all sorts of rigorous study on the topic of evolutionary altruism.

However, like many other aspects of human behavior, we seem to have transcended the exclusively adaptive aspect of altruism and use the moral drive for the purposes of "rational morality" even when it doesn't have adaptive benefit for ourselves or our genes.