Is morality good for you?
If the answer is, yes, 'I feel better when I do 'good' things'
then it is fundamentally egocentric
and if so there is a flaw in your claim to 'goodness'.
Here we must bring in that hoary old chestnut, 'free will' If as I gave that money and if such as I, lacked “free will” I could not be held responsible for my actions.
When one claims that my action 'I just gave money to that beggar' can be found fault with both on
metaphysical and empirical claims about human agency.
Metaphysically the notion of 'good' resides in heaven as opposed to Hell
and where the hell is heaven? (think Multiverses, now scientifically accepted, eternity and infinity and billions of Universes)
Empirically deconstructing 'good' brick by brick we find its foundations wanting.
Where did you get the money to give the beggar, and what is the source of the money you
gave come from. A whiter than white 'good' source or a questionable source
for the system's norms (how you got you money)favor the interests of some people, often at the expense of others.
So believing or living a life where you feel you are doing good might have a deleterious effect
on your character and be a false dawn.
Having said all this we live under normative commitments, ie give money to the beggar.
Do we falsely assume and presuppose as I am giving money that “morality” has universal applicability and this morality will be the lingua franca (a bridging language) for entry at the gates of Heaven, other believe in the morality of murdering unbelievers and throwing gays off the top of buildings assures their entry to Paradise. So morality is diverse across cultures and does not have universal status or consistency If agents, you and me are different in our socio economic politico education or conditioning then it is prima facie apparent that one morality does not have universal application.
A person's beliefs are best explained in terms of his moral beliefs; and his moral beliefs are best explained in terms of natural facts about the type of person s/he is
Nietzsche says, “every great philosophy so far has been…the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” But the “morality” that a philosopher embraces simply bears “decisive witness to who he is” — i.e., who he essentially is — that is, to the “innermost drives of his nature”
Moralities are…merely a sign language of the affects of your conditioning. Is the giving of money to the beggar a morality of sympathy or an expression of physiological overexcitability
I walked past the beggar, someone that young sleeping in the open on cold London nights, my step faltered, something happened to by mind and transposed to by walking away, I had to return and give him some money. ergo I was compelled phsyiologically brain/body both material entities.
This means that the conscious mental states that precede the action (giving money to the beggar) are, in fact, epiphenomenal,(a secondary effect or by-product) of our conditioning and must be considered in virtue of other type-facts about the person giving the mone.
If the answer is, yes, 'I feel better when I do 'good' things'
then it is fundamentally egocentric
and if so there is a flaw in your claim to 'goodness'.
Here we must bring in that hoary old chestnut, 'free will' If as I gave that money and if such as I, lacked “free will” I could not be held responsible for my actions.
If my motives could not be distinguished then no evaluative distinctions could be drawn among my act in terms of my motive.
If agents lack “free will” they could not be held responsible for their actions.
Against the Free Will Thesis, Nietzsche argues that a free agent (that is, one sufficiently free to be morally responsible) would have to be causa sui (i.e., self-caused, or the cause of itself); but since we are not causa sui, no one can be a free agent. Nietzsche takes for granted — not implausibly — that our moral and religious traditions are incompatibilist at their core: causally determined wills are not free wills. the concept of a causa sui is something fundamentally absurd and a perversion of logic.
The desire for “freedom of the will” …the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and…to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.
The desire for “freedom of the will” …the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and…to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.
So if my 'good and moral' action, if my motives could not be distinguished then no evaluative distinctions could be drawn among such a 'giving' act in terms of my motives.
When one claims that my action 'I just gave money to that beggar' can be found fault with both on
metaphysical and empirical claims about human agency.
Metaphysically the notion of 'good' resides in heaven as opposed to Hell
and where the hell is heaven? (think Multiverses, now scientifically accepted, eternity and infinity and billions of Universes)
Empirically deconstructing 'good' brick by brick we find its foundations wanting.
Where did you get the money to give the beggar, and what is the source of the money you
gave come from. A whiter than white 'good' source or a questionable source
for the system's norms (how you got you money)favor the interests of some people, often at the expense of others.
So believing or living a life where you feel you are doing good might have a deleterious effect
on your character and be a false dawn.
Having said all this we live under normative commitments, ie give money to the beggar.
Do we falsely assume and presuppose as I am giving money that “morality” has universal applicability and this morality will be the lingua franca (a bridging language) for entry at the gates of Heaven, other believe in the morality of murdering unbelievers and throwing gays off the top of buildings assures their entry to Paradise. So morality is diverse across cultures and does not have universal status or consistency If agents, you and me are different in our socio economic politico education or conditioning then it is prima facie apparent that one morality does not have universal application.
A person's beliefs are best explained in terms of his moral beliefs; and his moral beliefs are best explained in terms of natural facts about the type of person s/he is
Nietzsche says, “every great philosophy so far has been…the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” But the “morality” that a philosopher embraces simply bears “decisive witness to who he is” — i.e., who he essentially is — that is, to the “innermost drives of his nature”
Moralities are…merely a sign language of the affects of your conditioning. Is the giving of money to the beggar a morality of sympathy or an expression of physiological overexcitability
I walked past the beggar, someone that young sleeping in the open on cold London nights, my step faltered, something happened to by mind and transposed to by walking away, I had to return and give him some money. ergo I was compelled phsyiologically brain/body both material entities.
This means that the conscious mental states that precede the action (giving money to the beggar) are, in fact, epiphenomenal,(a secondary effect or by-product) of our conditioning and must be considered in virtue of other type-facts about the person giving the mone.
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