Hi, I am retired after a career in IT. I used to play chess, bridge and Go. I used to read science fiction in my youth but my main reading now is history, insofar as I do any reading at all.

And so to my moral view:

I have only an ignorant blogger’s interest in morality. I have never read a book on the subject and I currently don’t plan to. If you therefore feel like telling me to piss off and go and annoy someone else, now’s the time to do it.

However, I feel that all atheists are entitled to be amateur moral philosophers because we all need a moral system. I hesitate to load myself with labels but I am a relativist, and mostly consequentialist. I like to think of myself as a moral pragmatist.

My view of morality seems to differ from that of most according to the little I’ve read. I have a society centred view of morality. I think moral systems, like language, the law and, perhaps, basic civility, are the pillars upon which society is built. Accordingly, the purpose of a moral system is to encourage actions by the members of a society which increase the overall wellbeing. A moral system is a tool for the more efficient functioning of society consistent with the shared values of the members.
It follows that I think a moral system and associated values should be dynamic and change with the changing needs of society as it struggles to survive in a changing world.

It also follows that I feel what goes on in people’s heads is of only passing interest. The moral person is the person who consistently performs moral acts. It doesn’t matter that his motives are self seeking or even evil. If moral acts are the result, that’s what counts.

Motives are for judges and detectives. To the practical moralist they are too difficult to assess and of little moment.

I note that many of life’s decisions have to be made too quickly for sober consideration. Instinct and emotion play a big part. So any moral system must be largely compatible with our emotions and instincts, (at least the “better” ones).

I also note that even a consequentialist will seldom get the time for extensive reflection on decisions and is likely to fall back on previous experience of similar decisions thus developing an internal rule based system.

If you have the urge to rip all this to bits please do so in a new thread.

Firstly, Gordonhide, I think that a diversity of viewpoints is exactly what forums need. I welcome you to the forums. If people want to rip each other to pieces on a consensual basis, then they're welcome to do so on this forum.
But personally, I find that I agree with almost everything you've just said.

GordonHide wrote:Moral systems, like language, the law and, perhaps, basic civility, are the pillars upon which society is built. Accordingly, the purpose of a moral system is to encourage actions by the members of a society which increase the overall wellbeing. A moral system is a tool for the more efficient functioning of society consistent with the shared values of the members.
It follows that I think a moral system and associated values should be dynamic and change with the changing needs of society as it struggles to survive in a changing world...I note that many of life’s decisions have to be made too quickly for sober consideration. Instinct and emotion play a big part. So any moral system must be largely compatible with our emotions and instincts, (at least the “better” ones).

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that society is really linked to morality because I think morality has been created by cooperation within tribes. In today's society, being moral remains important. It helps you to build relationships and it helps to keep you out of jail! If I want to sell my moral system to society, I'll have to appeal to people's emotion and instincts. It's when we ask ourselves whether we'll partake in abortion or euthanasia or homosexual relationships that I think we have to put our instincts to one side and focus on the consequences of our actions.

GordonHide wrote:It also follows that I feel what goes on in people’s heads is of only passing interest. The moral person is the person who consistently performs moral acts. It doesn’t matter that his motives are self seeking or even evil. If moral acts are the result, that’s what counts. Motives are for judges and detectives. To the practical moralist they are too difficult to assess and of little moment.

I agree, once again. In medicine, there are these strange cases where the law puts a shocking amount of emphasis on intent. In Australia, if a person wishes to end his/her life, this is only allowed to be done accidentally. Doctors are not allowed to prescribe poison. They are, however, allowed to prescribe pain-killers in lethal doses. This is only allowed because the "motive" was to relieve pain and the death was a "side-effect". It''s crazy.

I look forward to learning more about you on these forums. Particularly, I'm curious about what you mean when you call yourself a relatavist because it can have various interpretations.

[I'm sorry that I accidentally replaced this post. Ryan]

Thanks for the reply on moral relatavism.

On morality,

Gordonhide wrote:

RyanCarey wrote:I think that society is really linked to morality because I think morality has been created by cooperation within tribes. In today's society, being moral remains important. It helps you to build relationships and it helps to keep you out of jail! If I want to sell my moral system to society, I'll have to appeal to people's emotion and instincts.

I don't wish to teach my grandmother to suck eggs but I assume you are aware that "proto-morality" has been observed in many animal species. So it pre-dates tribes by a long way.

Well no, I'm no expert there. But I believe that morality evolved. As evolutionary psychologists tells us, kin-selection was involved. The example of that is in insect colonies, sterile females acting as workers to assist their mother in the production of additional offspring. And I think also reciprocal altruism was involved. So living in groups (you don't have to call them tribes), if you help another individual, they may help you. So cooperation might inexpensively increase genetic fitness.
edit: reposted

GordonHide wrote:[I'm sorry that I accidentally replaced this post. Ryan]

I very nearly did that to one of fg's posts - only the back button saved me. We should be very careful not to absent-mindedly hit 'edit' instead of 'reply'.

On 'altruism' in evolution, the basic theory Dawkins laid out, which AFAIK is still pretty well supported (I'll see if I can find one of the evolutionary scientists from the atheist forums to check this), is that it's about genes. You're programmed to maximise the chances of continued existence of genes identical to yours. Your brother and sister are expected to share about half your genes, ditto for your offspring, your uncle would have a quarter and your first cousin an eighth.

So from an evolutionary perspective, we gain if we give up our lives to save 9 of our cousins. We obviously don't think like that (and some animals eat their siblings at the first chance they get, so there's obviously more to it than that simple algorithm), but our evolutionary programming takes it into account. When we live in relatively small groups (tribes/packs, or whatever you want to call them), we're likely to be quite closely interrelated, and so 'altruistic' actions towards the rest of our pack are likely to benefit several of our relatives.