[Guille]

Withoutme, it’s a great idea to have started this thread.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe Our moral ideas and sentiments

I want to discuss this, for it is much more important than it appears. Is morality part of thought (rational) or of emotions (spontaneous)? And in contrast, we have the question whether we should have moral rules (dogmas, laws…) or believe in moral intuition (personal)? I believe the alter question won’t take us anywhere, it is very Hegelian (from the possible to the real). I prefer the Bergson’s opposition of actual with virtual, which applied to this case, is wether morality is ideas or sentiments. What do you think?

Originally Posted by WithoutMe The first springs from the Reptilian Brain: It is the set of desires inherent in our nature, which impel us to eat, drink, congregate, procreate: in general, to continue our physical existence and exercise our inborn faculties.

From this we might also conclude that all egoism and egocentrism (not the same things!) in humans comes from the reptile brain. Also, we know that our primitive acting intuitions come from here, and thus that the reptile brain might be easily in conflict with the mammalian brain or the human brain.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe The second springs from the Mammalian Brain: It is the state of society, which makes necessary certain rules governing our behavior and interactions, in order to maintain society and the goods attainable only in society.

This tells us that all altruism comes from here. We know that altruism, that any act without an objective is sing of decadency, we might say that being mammals means being in decadency. I believe this probably comes from the fact that mammals lived for thousands of years under the dominance of dinosaurs, and so they feel very reduced even though they started to be the governors of the world after the dinosaurs’ extinction. We can see that doing things in favour of the group might inter in conflict with both doing the best for us and with following our rule. For example, if one follows religious dogmas imagine that all the food that is left in the world is pork, would a Muslim or a Jew not eat pork and die of hunger just because their religions prohibit it?

Originally Posted by WithoutMe The third springs from the Human Brain (and is the last brain to develop in the grand evolutionary scale): It is our conscious, explicit attempts to figure out what our proper goals and rules of conduct are.

More important than our morals, I think, is the morality of our ethics. It is difficult to explain the difference, but it is an important technical point. Also, I don’t think the human brain is the last brain the be developed, there might be an evolution of a new brain which complicates things even more, or resolves them. Maybe this fourth brain is what makes the other three be in harmony.

I think I’ve noticed something important. I believe we actually have four different parts of our minds (3 for the brain, as you said, but 4 for the mind). We have the division between consciousness and sub-consciousness. Within sub-consciousness, there is something which we call unconsciousness (which is our dreams and other primitive animal properties, like eating and reproducing), and the sub-conscious which is not unconscious is the society, the realization of other objects and subjects, which includes our feelings and our basic physical relation to things (like when we grab a tennis racquet). Then the consciousness also divides in two, the supra-consciousness (term which I’ve invented) which is the conscious of the qualities change and the state of things of the external world, and all the other conscious which is not supra-conscious is the knowledge and understanding of the self and it’s properties.

By all that, what I meant, was to explain a physical thing. The four aprts of the mind:
Unconsciousness: Internal Space (quantity, body)
Non-unconscious Sub-consciousness: External Space (objects, people, feelings)
Consciousness: Internal time (our qualities, and how and why they are what they are)
Supra-consciousness: External time (state of thins and qualities of the world)
We can see there is a clear evolution, but we can also see that still we haven’t managed our consciousness and we already have the supra-consciousness, so we are very inferior to the later one, for the moment (for example, the invasion of Iraq is non supra-conscious, because Bush didn’t realize the time in which that country lives in, nor how or why it is what it is).

Originally Posted by WithoutMe Now, why do we need morality? Because we have free will.

We don’t need it, it is Christianity and capitalism what has made us think that we need morality. And there is no reason to believe in free will. When do we have free will? When are we not controlled by the laws of dynamics (as matter), or of thermodynamics (as energy)? Or of psychology, as minds? I recommend you read the thread “Determinism and Free Will” started by myself, in the forum of metaphysics. It is a very good thread.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe We do not merely exist, but act, and in acting, are faced with infinite alternative courses of action (or inaction). In order to act, we must choose a course of action; and in order to choose, we need some reason to prefer one course of action to another. Morality is our guide to choosing among these alternatives.

We actual exist because we act, not vice versa. We wouldn’t exist if we didn’t act, if we didn’t have motion, as we can see in those people who do less things in life than others, exist in minor form. But most of our actions don’t imply a moral judgement. For example, when I stand up, that doesn’t have a moral implication, so I didn’t think about if it was moral or not to stand up. Only when we do things for an end, for a purpose, does morality enter in action. And this is the proof that morality isn’t real, and that, as one of my favourite philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There are no interpretations of moral acts, there are only moral interpretations of acts” and even though it may seem there is little difference, there is a huge difference.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe Thus, Choice is the fundamental axis on which all morality is based! Instead of this kind of a morality, which is “to-be-decided”, based on a principle or an idea, can we not exist in a way so as to do, not on any said or known idea (be it the moral values or out of the fear of punishment), but do as if the whole of Existence flows through us while one is doing it, i.e., one doesnot actually do it, instead, it is done, not by someone or by some idea, but one that is borne out of the precise perception of ‘what is’ (in place of the ‘what ought to be’)…. Can that be possible?

You are correct in that choice is the fundamental axis on which morality is based. But your intention of un-subjectivity and un-relativity in morality, is useless. It is what religions tried, it is what tribunal justice tries, and they all fail. In fact, I do not know of any system more unfair than the juridical one. There shouldn’t be laws on which judges are based and which they have to follow, they should take independently the judgement, each case is different and I belief we can’t predetermine the cost of actions when dealing with morality, because we are not like electrons which are always the same, our cases are much more complex for any exact scientific intention in justice.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe Having a guide, be it morality or whatever, will need a mind that listens not to ‘what is’, but to ‘what should be’. Now instead of listening to ‘what should be’, can one be totally attentive only to ‘what is’ & act accordingly? In that case, there will be no image of that thing, as per the ‘should have been’ like this or that, but the actual & immediate perception, a sort of real relation among all things… Can one then live in an absolute reality, a reality that is stripped bare of its notions, ideas, theories, images, abstractions, & all that goes under the veil of “should have been” or “should be”?

I agree here. It is strange, because you are in favour of instinctive, intuitional morality, but not of subjective, relative morality. I believe the first takes to the second, cause instinct can only be individual, not of a group. We can’t live in absolute reality cause consciousness and sub-consciousness, the 3 brains you explained, are all abstractions, ideas, images, notions, getting far away from reality. Do we want to live like trees and plants? I don’t, for sure. Can a human ever want to live without ideologies, without the experience of platonic love…? Our minds have given us all the bad things we have that the rest of the universe doesn’t, but it has also given us all the good things that the rest of the universe doesn’t have.

Originally Posted by WithoutMe In short, can one have an innate ethics, one that is not learned or grows out of age, but one that is a 'mode of existence' , a sort of living-in-harmony? Or, in the language of Neuro-Psychology, can the three brains work in perfect harmony with each other?

This is, I think, were the pursue of a world with morally perfect individuals becomes part of a false and totally ideological utopia. This I why I hate the world of morals so much, I get desperate…

Originally Posted by WithoutMe PS. "Morality" is based on "mores" (the word "more" means "should be" or the "ought to be")...

Therefore, your ethics is immoral. But it is also false. I guess ethics is blind without morality, just as morality is empty without ethics.