Morality is natural

Religion and Secularism
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Your concept of what “nature” is does not make sense to me. By “morality is natural”, I mean we humans have natural tendencies. At some point, and this is the part that doesn’t make sense, you separate humans from nature, like this:

You do recognize natural tendencies, as do I. Call them instincts, inherited traits, the result of evolution, the body/brain interacting with the environment for billions of years, all of those work. That’s why we study apes and learn about ourselves. We can study all life forms and learn about ourselves. We can take it into the world of pure math. There is no line where something is “human” and not “nature”, or “nature” and not “math”. When you do that, you start to deconstruct language in a way that makes the idea of language unusable.

So this statement:

Doesn’t not make sense to me.

It speaks of morality as some external force that would impose itself on nature. I’m saying morality is part of nature. You can try to write a formula for it, but I have asked that of you before and you have only said that it’s possible, but you haven’t produced one. It might be possible, and can understand how you can make a good case for it to be possible, but we, with our puny little brains and short lifespans, haven’t written that formula yet. Sci-Fi is rife with stories of what happens when you try to do that.

“Morality is Natural” is not an argument against “nature functions purely mathematically”. The two are perfectly compatible. A field of energy sprang into existence with some matter scattered around in it, and it has kept expanding ever since. The early particles combined with others and that process continued and humans evolved from all of that. We had this ability, this trait, of doing if/then scenarios with everything. We used it to spread across the planet faster than any other creature, making us feel pretty special. We’ve made a bit of a mess since then, while also developing the ability to detect threats from space and maybe save the planet (I’m thinking of an asteroid).

That choice, to look up and see if there is something we can do to make the future better vs taking whatever is easily grasped that makes us feel good in the moment, is what I’m calling morality. You can explain those thoughts and actions in quite a lot of detail with math, but you can’t explain it completely, and you can’t write a formula to figure out what the right choice is for everyone in every minute. You can spend some time thinking about why we have what seem like choices, and you can look back to the beginning and see there was some force, something that made those early particles combine, but you can’t put our language onto that because those particles didn’t have our brains like ours. You could say it’s a primitive survival instinct, but what would that mean?

If we can’t talk about what is “good”, without acknowledging every philosophical and theoretical thought about how things happen or what we are, then bad things will continue to happen.

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I cannot understand how Nature, which is not an entity can be moral, except if you anthropomorphize it.

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“nature is moral” doesn’t make sense. “Morality is natural” means morality bubbles up from all the natural processes and forces.

That’s the short answer

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Well, I see morality as an emergent abstract quality that transcends the mathematics of survival. But it is a human invention.

George Carlin put this in a more natural perspective

(warning crude language)

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Or as George says, “we made it up because we’re alive.”

Both disconnect “we” humans from nature. If you put humans back in nature, where they are, so this is really just a language trick, them it’s, “nature made it up, because it’s nature.”

George loved language. He played with it. Language contains so much baggage, our history, our early thoughts that we couldn’t express are still tied up in language even though we know more now. George played with it for fun, and comedy gets you to step outside of language and culture and view yourself differently.

You say things like “transcend”, for what purpose, I don’t know.

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The story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and being banned from Eden, is one of the biblical cautionary tales I can relate to.

The account of Adam and Eve is not a parable, but rather a representation of what takes place in all our lives. However, some scholars consider it a “wisdom tale” in the wisdom tradition, questioning the paradoxes and harsh realities of life. The story can also be seen as a metaphor, with the names of the characters and places carrying deeper meanings.

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Humans are just too smart for our own good without the benefit of normally tempered evolutionary history of adapting to the environment.
Witness other great apes who have evolved at the slower pace of natural selection and have adapted to their environment instead of altering it.
Apes don’t cause global warming. But Bonobos and common Chimps do represent both extremes of morality exhibited in humans.

Humans are removed from the natural world. We change it. And we exhibit both extemes of any moral scale.

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You are getting closer to saying your description is a religion and further from explaining how it is a scientific view

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It is in no way intended as a endorsement of the bible or religion. It happens to be an allegory to the mutative evolutionary event of human intellectual genetics.
(See Chromosome fusion)

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I don’t see why, either.

For me morality is a social construct, resulting from the needs of people in a given society.

And, even if i am not religious, and still less christian, Adam and Eve story tells something very right:

When Humanity accedes to full consciousness, it stop to be part of animal kingdom. It accedes to abstraction, and needs a morality, rules.

1 Like
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That is stated in a way that makes more sense. I can concede that there is some merit to humans “rising above” other animals or being separate in a way, just not as thoroughly as you are stating it. I think discoveries of intelligent reasoning in squids, corvids, whales and dolphins, and our primate cousins shows a high level of abstraction. Sure, humans are on some further end of the spectrum, but it’s still a spectrum.

The part about “needs a morality” though. Doesn’t everything need some rules? Our rules grew out of our instincts to cooperate that came before full consciousness (which I’m not sure what that is, or how it’s measured). Any social species has those instincts, and separating instinct from behavior learned by following the herd is a gray area. I think the larger need is to reflect on the rules, to think about them, to think about what kind of future we want. That really separates us from other animals.

Morality as we know it is mostly rules passed along by people who had no idea what stars actually are. It’s no wonder our morality systems are so flawed.

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Lausten, it’s not about what you write, it’s about the philosophers and thinking that you keep highlighting for us. Life is very crowded

I watched an interesting little video, for the most part the host impresses me for such young pup - But he said something that’s another one of those red flags that’s worth pointing out.

I’m sharing it because I’m still trying to get folks like you to understand what I’m actually trying to discuss - and push back against the mischaracterization I feel victim to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-d7nK2dhrA

The Most Misunderstood Philosophy Quotes (and what they actually mean)

Unsolicited advice

14:25 “During gestation the fetus briefly has a tail due to an Evolutionary Hang Over.”

Dear unsolicited advice,

My problem with philosophy is how disconnected from our biological reality it is.
Don’t you appreciate your biological body/brain interacting with living reality (interior and exterior) is what creates your Mind, your consciousness, your sense of Self? — it would be much more intellectually (and spiritually) profitable to appreciate that we are the product of the past half billion years of Earth’s evolution.

During our gestation, our body sort of recapitulates its own evolutionary history.

Conversely, calling it a “Hang Over” seems to me to underscores our basic human hubristic nature: Self-Absorbed and Self-Serving. Something that it would do us good to honestly recognize.

The most important takeaway being that your physical biological body has layers and depths of knowledge and agendas beyond our conscious understanding.
Getting one’s mind to recognize as much is sort of like turning on the light, and helps one make all sorts of important intellectual and spiritual connections that are impossible when keeping it confined to our wonderfully creative imaginations (our human mindscape so to speak.).

Without such first base understanding, a coherent self-understanding is impossible.

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Then start a thread of your own.

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Another way to look at it

And this one, about how centuries of study led us to conclude that everything is natural. It’s not a belief that we begin with as an axiom.

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Morality starts with survival instinct, which eventually leads to emergence of recognition and rules of conduct that are conducive to survival.
Symbiosis between different species, such as flowering plants and pollinating insects is the ultimate moral engagement.

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That’s more like what I was saying from the beginning

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???

For me, morality suppose consciousness

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Make no mistake. Bees are conscious and selective about choosing the best flower fields to establish a colony. In fact, when scouts report separate sites, there is a “debate” about the conditions that make one field preferable over another.
Consensus of choice is achieved via “quorum sensing”.

I would agree with you on an intellectual basis where morality becomes codified into a general philosophy of behavioral practices.

Some dogs are so familiar with human behavior that they will suffer abuse wihout retaliation, but will protect their master with their lives, the ultimate sacrifice to pay for a lifelong bond of symbiotic companionship.

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That’s a nasty come back, ignores that I’m trying to bring it back to the fundamental notion you’re presenting and defending.

Lets go back to #1 -

What do you want to discuss?

AI=

Ethical naturalism is a metaethical theory that suggests moral properties and facts can be understood and explained through natural, empirical means, meaning they are not supernatural or non-natural. In essence, it proposes that ethics can be studied scientifically, much like other natural phenomena. A key example of ethical naturalism is Utilitarianism, which defines moral actions as those that produce the greatest happiness or pleasure, which are considered natural human experiences.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown:

Core Idea: Ethical naturalism argues that moral claims are not arbitrary or based on subjective feelings, but rather grounded in objective, observable aspects of the world.

It’s all just words.
They say “scientifically studied,” that says what?
What good is that? Science is the telescope.
What are you pointing that telescope at? (why leave that blank?)
That’s the challenge!

I don’t hear anything in there which brings it back to what is happening within ourselves, which is where our sense of Morality begins.

The ‘self’ remains that mysterious something? For what purpose? Can you explain that?

No mention that our “self” is our physical body/brain that produces your mind. Instead, I keep hearing “God” being brought into the discussion—either for or against—don’t matter, ‘pagan’ means nothing without that God Fearing foundation that continues to be at our center.

Again assumes that we exist in a vacuum from the natural world and creatures and environments around us.
(I find that immoral.)

I find the sterile “nature” quite gentle and in-offensive - But what does that mean when it never connects with what’s inside of us?

When, in reality, upon this planet, all the relevant mysteries are happening right down here, and within our evolving biology, from the micro to the macro.

Right and this is 2025 and the past fifty years have answered those question in the negative, we have been a disaster to ourselves and to this Earthy biosphere upon which everything hinges.
I’ve asked it before, and as with all uncomfortable questions - it get’s ignored.

Show me a metric or a vector, that indications a constructive change in our attitude towards how we treat Earth and each other?

America had a government that was the bright shining example on the hill, and we allowed ourselves to trash it (our constitution, our government, civil norms and expectations) Me, me, me reigns again.
These philosophers that you feel so proud and protective of, seem to me a gross failure, no one has prepared us for understanding ourselves, nor how to deal this with the monster future we’ve created for ourselves, and that will result in human living a rapidly diminishing quality of life - which science’s study of nature is revealing to all who dare look.

Not to mention how easily it is for us to disregard, things we really ought to be paying attention to.

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Sure didn’t sound like you were getting back to my notion when you said it’s said not about my words.

Non sequitur

They who? Why do they matter?

Then I don’t know what you read.

Kinda did

Do not see how you got that from what I wrote

Stating the date means nothing. It’s a logical fallacy.

I covered how failures of the past are not counter to the systems that can create a better future. There are many ways to show this, but let’s start with, if it’s true, then everything you have ever done is also a failure, and according to your logic, you should stop doing it and do something different.

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That’s not my logic.

I have learned that sometimes we need to burn on the crosses of our making - that is facing up to our mistakes, being open and humble enough to learn, striving to understand the dynamics at work.

Well if you want to be that way about it.
For instance, when I say we are all guilty, I do include myself.
Failure is a part of a dynamic life, but so is success.

For me and myself I know that looking at civilization’s history of empires, (which has brought about many true marvels, no doubt) they show the same failings and horrendous self-destructive behaviors, as so aptly outlined by Machiavelli, (regardless of his motivations or goal).

It comes back to the Cosmic challenge that the universe handed humanity during ~ 1950s - 1960s.

Watch out kids!
You have acquired the powers and tricks of Gods.
But you are forgetting something!
Earth is finite!!!
Earth cannot support endless increasing populations, read—vanity and gluttony.

There are limits to growth—global warming, ocean acidification, deforestation have cascading consequences, and they are all bad for our complex, highly interwoven and interdependent infrastructure.

We may by nature be Self-absorbed and Self-serving, it was time to start feeling guilty about it and changing our ways.
The time had come to face facts, tamp down our fires,
or we would destroy our own society
and turn Earth’s biosphere into a wasteland.

Instead business and political leaders today are as vicious and without regard for the general populous as ever. And USA just trashed its hollowed Constitution.

Somehow we needed to figure out how to wholeheartedly take Earth’s complex systems (biosphere + global heat and moisture distribution engine) and other creatures seriously - into our hearts, thoughts, budgets and yes into our business thinking.

But who was listening?

WE can’t even be brothered to get to know ourselves,
too busy trying to achieve endless potential,
to appreciate what we have right here and now.`

_______________________________________________________-

Philosophy is wonderful stuff, asks great questions - but its language is in ideals, within a ‘what if…’ framing. The mind can do anything it wants within its thoughts. Appreciating that divide between your dreamy mind and your pragmatic physical body - is a worthy goal. That opens whole vistas of deeper self awareness.

None of it offers, “infinite potential”, what it offers is a more coherent understanding, leading to a real foundation under oneself.

I’m quite fortunate, living in the natural world in a way few get to (these 40 interesting acres amongst 4 adults and 2 kids and my Maddy has me walking miles every day, it’s this world I identify with, watching critters, tracks and burrows, and so on.

I can look into my body and into time in a way few are interested in - it’s no woo, it’s doing the homework. Keeping up on scientific advances in evidence and understanding standing. Being capable of relating it back to the world I experience.

Having an deepening awareness of the relationship between my body as something different, smarter and with an agenda and awareness beyond my thoughts, something unimaginable to me, but that I know goes back a half billions years worth of unbroken generations. That isn’t simply a factoid or hangover, it is who we are.

Scoff at the term ‘having a relationship’ with my body, I know sounds weird, but then I think of my “relationship” with this Maddy dog, we’ve learned to communicate amazingly well, but how we do it, is a mystery, she doesn’t understand my words, I never learned hand signals or formal training. We just tuned into each other. (Like the Supreme Court justice about pornography, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it :wink: )

Science visualization has enabled laypeople tremendous insights that help understanding along. Like I may not be able to picture spelled letters in my mind’s eye. But let me watch video of my insides, that I can visualize in my thoughts and it fits into a coherent knowledge base that I’ve already achieved.

No superpower, simply personal curiosity, interest. It’s been helpful in various ways, pragmatic and philosophical. The information is there but there needs be an interest, along with a story to provide folks with a framework over which pieces of information can be assembled into a coherent whole.

The biological information is out there for anyone to digest and process.

Without this sort of biological/evolutionary self-awareness that I’ve developed over the past 7 decades, well particularly the past half dozen years, I fear I’d be a basket case in today’s meltdown into dystopia.

But in the end, I only have one death to die, and one life to live, and mine is feeling pretty good, and I know that now matters the most, so be present to it.

Feeling good about living in one’s own skin, leads to something as simple as
“I am a filament in the fabric of Earth’s Evolution” -
which for me says it all.
Much better than, Jesus Saves.

I also figure I may as well share, still looking for some interesting constructive conversation with someone who can relate to some of this.

All we do is fencing.