Morality

[Phobos]

Trying to get some discussion going on.

So, what is "morality?" Is there such a thing as true morality or is it just subjective?

[MSFixR]

Morality is a subjective set of rules established in the context of the group. The group may have a religious, civil or social basis. All members of the group are expected to abide by the same set of moral principles. Those members who do not abide by these principles are judged to be amoral or immoral. Morality is also a construct of our species in so far as we are sapiens, that is "knowing" or "wise" humans. Other species while they may be self-aware do not operate according to a moral code but rather by instinct and genetic predisposition.

[Phobos]

*sighs*

Could you not post your definitive beliefs on the subject? Now I have to be what is known as the devil's advocate.

You are incorrect, MSFixR. as morality is bound to nature. Within every species there is some form of code, this code of law dictates the Earth. Although animals are primarily "instinct-" based they are also guided by some type of moral law. Let's take the case of a dog being introduced into a new family that has a rival species known as a cat. There are plenty of cases where dogs will treat the cat with ethical behavior as they note the cat as one of the pack. You are saying humans are the only one's that are morally wise?

[MSFixR]

Originally Posted by Phobos

*sighs*

You are saying humans are the only one's that are morally wise?

Yes but I wouldn't use the term "wise".

[icelos]

Originally Posted by Phobos

*sighs*
Although animals are primarily "instinct-" based they are also guided by some type of moral law. Let's take the case of a dog being introduced into a new family that has a rival species known as a cat. There are plenty of cases where dogs will treat the cat with ethical behavior as they note the cat as one of the pack. You are saying humans are the only one's that are morally wise?

I don't think it's morality so much as it's a conditioned response. A wild dog will most probably kill the cat since it lacks the necessary conditioning to behave as one who was raised in a home.

[Frasier]

Morality is a subjective set of rules established in the context of the group

Agreed to that.

as morality is bound to nature. Within every species there is some form of code,

....mmmmm...nope.

I believe, even we both of us have a different set of morals, or code of morality.

[Phobos]

Originally Posted by icelos

I don't think it's morality so much as it's a conditioned response. A wild dog will most probably kill the cat since it lacks the necessary conditioning to behave as one who was raised in a home.

Isn't that the basis we get out morals by, which is being conditioned?

....mmmmm...nope.

I believe, even we both of us have a different set of morals, or code of morality.

Our universal morals are probably the same as in not to kill, steal, rape, et cetera. If not, then yeah, we have a different moral code.

[Moshe..]

Morality is a subjective set of rules established in the context of the group. The group may have a religious, civil or social basis. All members of the group are expected to abide by the same set of moral principles. Those members who do not abide by these principles are judged to be amoral or immoral. Morality is also a construct of our species in so far as we are sapiens, that is "knowing" or "wise" humans. Other species while they may be self-aware do not operate according to a moral code but rather by instinct and genetic predisposition.

This is not morality. What you describe is called 'custom'. Maybe it's helpful to distinguish between 'morality' and 'ethics', since morality has a certain grounding in custom, from which ethics is unmoored.
When you say 'ethics', most people instantly think of kant. But it’s best to start with cicero’s story of the physiognomist in de fato who, on holidaying in athens, saw a monster, otherwise known as socrates. In socrates' face he reads every kind of evil and lust including, to alcibiades' incredulous amusement, hetero-sexuality ("in quo alcibiades cachinnum dicitur sustulisse") . Socrates replies, "you know me well". And despite the laughter, alcibiades famously corrobates cicero, comparing socrates to silenus in the symposium. What are we to make of these esoteric hints? Precisely this: socrates is a satyr, motivated by a lust for young boys which borders on sexual pathology, as it stems from a hated of the well-born and the beautiful. What socrates always pretends to conceal in conversation is the secret of how to make something ugly, beautiful. But this is a pretense. There is no secret within the dialogue, the act of dialogue itself is his secret. In satisfying his ugliest drives through philosophic discussion, he deifies his instincts. In concealing his lust in dialectics, he makes his conversation erotic and, in the process, avenges himself on the ruling class. (Think about the charges brought against him for corrupting the youth – doesn’t the sicilian expedition prove them true? Is it only co-incidence that, of all people, alcibiades leads the city to ruin? But what about the sinister effect dialectics had on Meno, the man for whom socrates was 'a stingray'? Or of plato on young dionysius II of syracuse?) The transmutation of your congenital dis-advantages into something of weight and substance: this is ethics as the greeks understood it. You don’t get rid of the ugly desire, you find a beautiful way in which to satisfy it. What has been satisfied in this way is no longer subjective, no longer relative to a particular group. The dialogues of socrates, as the ugliest man who became the most beautiful, are celebrated by the philosophers of every important culture - and herein lies his final refutation of protagoras

In the words of a german: "[H]ere a great mass of second nature has been added; then a piece of first nature removed - both times through long practice and daily work. Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed;there it is reinterpreted into sublimity…"

You are incorrect, MSFixR. as morality is bound to nature. Within every species there is some form of code, this code of law dictates the Earth. Although animals are primarily "instinct-" based they are also guided by some type of moral law. Let's take the case of a dog being introduced into a new family that has a rival species known as a cat. There are plenty of cases where dogs will treat the cat with ethical behavior as they note the cat as one of the pack. You are saying humans are the only one's that are morally wise?

Other animals are too stupid even for custom, let alone morality, let alone ethics. They have habit & instinct. Animals display plenty of nice behaviour - like rescue dogs! - but we draw a line here and say that similar nice behaviour in people is not real ethics. It's just nice. Not all nice behaviour is ethics, and not all ethics is nice. Ethics is something which intervenes in, or redirects (as in socrates), our instinctual and habitual life. In the sense of suddenly opposing the unconscious movement of nature, it shares the a-causal theological structure of a miracle, a kind of divine intervention

All members of the group are expected to abide by the same set of moral principles. Those members who do not abide by these principles are judged to be amoral or immoral.

Not everyone is to be judged from the same position, and rules have nothing to do with it.

Recall plato’s description of the great-souled man from the famous digression of theaetetus 175c-6. The great souled man: condemned by his serving girl, yet blessed of heaven

[Phobos]

What is the book as it is very interesting? Also, is it all in latin?

[Moshe..]

Plato is interesting, I'll post some youtube cartoons. You can read plato in english, it's fine. We studied him in english not attic. But the dialogues are more like a DIY kit than modern books, which makes them quite hard to read. They don't make sense on their own, you have to work out the correct interpretation - that's why discussing in a class is helpful. Plato wants you to think for yourself. Everything is hidden in metaphor, or disavowed through different characters. There's also a lot of irony to contend with. Socrates supposedly says ""I know that I know nothing". He is not being entirely honest.

Here's a children's cartoon for the republic


This is a french children's cartoon which extracts from a passage of the symposium 189d-192, disavowed through a fictional aristophanes.
The cartoon needs some more explanation. For plato we're amputees, mutilated. Love is a kind of phantom-limb syndrome, merely a symptom. But the key point is that zeus does not cut us in half on a whim (2:38). It is primarily a political move, with elements of humour involved. The political desire is to stop us ascending mount olympus. Nobody does any work on olympus, they just drink wine, sleep all day & play practical jokes. Only in his unhappy severed state, unable to reach olympus, does man become useful or economically productive. But the severing is also a joke, born out of the laughter of a god. After thousands of generations (emerging from the ground like circadas 6:09), nothing resembling our other half exists. Plato identifies love with memory. Love is a memory of lost happiness. The subversive side (for his athenian contemporaries who have non-stop orgies) is that sex is therefore merely forgetfulness. Sex does not restore lost happiness. On the contrary, in sex we forget that our unhappy (but useful as opposed to godlike) state is abnormal, therefore allowing us to adjust to stupidly going about our daily lives, raising children, or doing practical tasks (6:45). Love is impossible, a comedy. But sex is an unconscious simulation, and therefore dissipation, of the original memory. Now the response plato has in the back of his mind is orpheus. With his poetry, orpheus charms the gods of the underworld into restoring eurydice from death. On returning to earth, he can catch only one glimpse of her before she disappears.

Plato's linguistic influence extends to valentine's day cards or horoscopes which talk about "your other half" or "your soul mate". Not plato. Plato endorses sex for strictly political reasons. But he doesn't forget what zeus has done, why we are incomplete. The other half is dead. You have no soul-mate on earth. After the failure of orpheus, we can desire eurydice only from within ourselves. Philosophy is the same as love because both are forms of remembrance. Aware that the other half does not exist outside us, love (which is a phantom memory) is transformed into a desire for inner completion, which is ethics - and consists of plato's preoccupations: the balancing of the soul into a well-ordered republic, heroism before death, the sublimation of the instincts into art
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X...snum=4#PPT1,M1