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> My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. Hope I am not out of bond but I thin

> My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. Hope I am not out of bond but I think this demonstrates why a moral code also has to be an intellectual thing and not just an instinct thing.

o10449366 5y ago
I agree and for me it is, but what I learned from that experience is how powerful and influential our emotional state is. It really made me feel like a psychopath at times because I would understand how I "should" feel or do in a given situation, but without a strong emotional signal it felt like it didn't matter what choices I made.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  I think you learned something really profound (you could use it to understand others or why people even accept acting without conscience sometimes), thank you for sharing, too. Tangentially related - I had the experience - from being in a depression - of empathizing more with people down on their luck, people who are chronically grumpy or unlikable etc, or maybe those that are afraid of unknown people. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it made me see different sides of the human experience and I got out alive.
sneak 5y ago
Morals are about as far from instinct as one can get. They're also entirely subjective, fwiw.
- skissane 5y ago
  Morals are (at least in part) based on generalising instinct. Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child – morality is not that instinctive feeling itself, but when we reflect upon that feeling intellectually, especially when in doing so we universalise it, moving from "I am repelled and outraged by this, so I won't do it and do I what I can to stop others from doing it" to "everyone ought to be repelled and outraged by this, therefore nobody ought to do it and everybody ought to do what they can to stop others from doing it", that's when we've turned instinct into morality. Is morality "entirely subjective"? When someone says, "Torturing children is immoral", do you really want to reply "That's entirely subjective". The very reply itself seems morally compromised, even immoral. A good philosophical argument for the objectivity of morality is the "companions in the guilt" argument. Most people accept the objectivity of rationality, even those who deny the objectivity of morality. And yet, when we examine the two in detail, we can find a great many similarities between rationality and morality – morality says "don't do X", where X might be torturing a child, rationality says "don't believe X", where X might be the QAnon conspiracy theory; morality values states of affairs positively or negatively (moral vs immoral), rationality does the same (rational vs irrational) – in light of these similarities, how is it not special pleading to affirm the objectivity of one yet deny it of the other? To justify treating them differently, you'd need to give a good reason for doing so – but rarely is any reason given at all, and I don't think any of them are good. Rationally, we must either affirm the objectivity of morality or deny the objectivity of rationality. I think, to affirm the objectivity of morality is the better horn to take – we might even conclude it is the more rational one, if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality. Hence, morality is objective.
  - skissane 5y ago
    > if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality. That was meant to be "if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own objectivity". Thought one word typed another.
  - sneak 5y ago
    > Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child This, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, is a factually false statement. That's not how instincts work, or what they are. Additionally, even without that error, the statement holds false.
    - skissane 5y ago
      > This, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, is a factually false statement. That's not how instincts work, or what they are. How do they work? What are they then? > Additionally, even without that error, the statement holds false. How? Why?

o10449366 5y ago

I agree and for me it is, but what I learned from that experience is how powerful and influential our emotional state is. It really made me feel like a psychopath at times because I would understand how I "should" feel or do in a given situation, but without a strong emotional signal it felt like it didn't matter what choices I made.

kzrdude 5y ago
I think you learned something really profound (you could use it to understand others or why people even accept acting without conscience sometimes), thank you for sharing, too. Tangentially related - I had the experience - from being in a depression - of empathizing more with people down on their luck, people who are chronically grumpy or unlikable etc, or maybe those that are afraid of unknown people. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it made me see different sides of the human experience and I got out alive.

sneak 5y ago

Morals are about as far from instinct as one can get. They're also entirely subjective, fwiw.

skissane 5y ago
Morals are (at least in part) based on generalising instinct. Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child – morality is not that instinctive feeling itself, but when we reflect upon that feeling intellectually, especially when in doing so we universalise it, moving from "I am repelled and outraged by this, so I won't do it and do I what I can to stop others from doing it" to "everyone ought to be repelled and outraged by this, therefore nobody ought to do it and everybody ought to do what they can to stop others from doing it", that's when we've turned instinct into morality. Is morality "entirely subjective"? When someone says, "Torturing children is immoral", do you really want to reply "That's entirely subjective". The very reply itself seems morally compromised, even immoral. A good philosophical argument for the objectivity of morality is the "companions in the guilt" argument. Most people accept the objectivity of rationality, even those who deny the objectivity of morality. And yet, when we examine the two in detail, we can find a great many similarities between rationality and morality – morality says "don't do X", where X might be torturing a child, rationality says "don't believe X", where X might be the QAnon conspiracy theory; morality values states of affairs positively or negatively (moral vs immoral), rationality does the same (rational vs irrational) – in light of these similarities, how is it not special pleading to affirm the objectivity of one yet deny it of the other? To justify treating them differently, you'd need to give a good reason for doing so – but rarely is any reason given at all, and I don't think any of them are good. Rationally, we must either affirm the objectivity of morality or deny the objectivity of rationality. I think, to affirm the objectivity of morality is the better horn to take – we might even conclude it is the more rational one, if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality. Hence, morality is objective.
- skissane 5y ago
  > if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own rationality. That was meant to be "if we believe that rationality itself requires belief in its own objectivity". Thought one word typed another.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Most people would be instinctively repelled and outraged if they saw an adult torturing a child This, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, is a factually false statement. That's not how instincts work, or what they are. Additionally, even without that error, the statement holds false.
  - skissane 5y ago
    > This, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter, is a factually false statement. That's not how instincts work, or what they are. How do they work? What are they then? > Additionally, even without that error, the statement holds false. How? Why?