In a worldview that doesn't divinely reward you for morality, what is the point of being moral? What is the point of reducing suffering, treating others with respect, having integrity, etc?
>>34557001You be moral because you are forced to by society. You are a puny human who can't survive on your own (easily) so you have to be moral to exist or the tribe will kill or exile you.
>>34557001In practical terms, it oils the gears, making day-to-day life smoother and easier to put up with.In philosophical terms, it creates an existentialist victory. By CHOOSING to follow some self-generated or self-chosen rules just because you decided to, you take some control over your life and earn the right to take some pride in yourself.
>>34557001It helps me not hate the guy who lives in my bathroom mirror. Being a good person feels good.
>>34557001Morality is its own reward. Goodness is to be loved because it's good, not for any external reason. Anyone who looks for a reward, either spiritual or physical, is not a moral man or a good person.If someone doesn't understand how that's possible, then they've probably never been on the receiving end of genuine immorality.
>>34557001First off, our views of morality are likely very different. You probably believe in whatever version of "morality" your local authority leader handed you when you were a baby. So I probably don't behave "morally" in your eyes.Morality, in truth, is striving to do what's best for those around you, or at least causing minimal harm to others. Why? because everyone acting the way mashes a better world for everyone else, including you.
>>34557181An NPC is someone who lives selfishly and looks for what benefits them personally in everything that they do. That's the unexamined life, or the partial life. Someone who grows past that becomes impartial, learns how to see things objectively, and stops being a mindless NPC.
>What is the point of the good if it isn't good
>>34557209nah, it's definitely you. nihilism is the most npc opinion possible.
>>34557001This is what Plato’s Republic is about.
I guess if it was the stone age you'd help your group you'd depend on and the human species to survive, nowadays when there're too many humans probably none.
>>34557001Sex. Sex with animals. Sex with a cute Kitsune gf. Sex Fox. Fox Sex. Fex. Sox. Sex.There is no reason to consider the bible any more sacred than any other religious text, so no need to care about the opinion of some supposed God.The only metric by which one can judge actions is therefore one's own will.If that's your belief, I agree with you. Ignore the wannabe based Frieren-Orthodox-Tradcath-larpers disagreeing with you, they are just retards.Just keep in mind, humans are social animals, they want to be part of an in-group. In order to prevent discrimination and conflict against the outgroup, modern western society says everyone is equal, we're all humans, but if everyone is part of the in-group, noone is.In such a nihilistic society, there are only few reasons left to be social. I'd say, just be natural.Be kind to people you like. If you are surrounded by people you dont like anyways, find a different place/community to spend your time.Also, if you are pleasant to be around, people will want to help you in return. You literally cannot survive on your own. You need to work together with others sooner or later, you're just stronger that way.By being a cynical dickhead, you are just gonna come off as childish and nobody will want to help you when you need it.Be nice when it matters to you, be nice when it's useful.That's how prople have always acted, it's just that circustances used to be different.
>>34557001There get to be material consequences or "rewards" when you take out the divinity or even the morality of performing benevolent actions.By choosing to perpetuate the beautiful complexity of continuous unnending existance, you attach your own "individual" existance to everything that exists. There is no eternal metaphisical reward, any reward can't exist outside of the existence you've helped build (or deconstruct).Simply put: just try harder and stop caring for things that "exist outside reality"
>>34557001The question assumes morality needs an external reward or motivation to be rational but that gets things backwards. If you're only moral because you expect a cosmic payoff, that's not morality, it's a transaction. The interesting question is why suffering is bad regardless of who's watching.And it just is bad. Not because a god declared it, not because evolution hardwired me to feel that way, but because morality is a real feature of conscious experience and recognizing that doesn't require a supernatural framework. Moral realism doesn't need God as its foundation any more than mathematics or gravity does. Numbers don't stop being prime because nobody's counting.Existentialism gets me the rest of the way there. I don't have a given purpose, which means I get to choose what I'm building... and what I'm building is a self, through every decision I make. Aristotle called the destination eudaimonia: flourishing not as a feeling but as a mode of existence you inhabit through practice. The mechanism is arete (the ongoing perfection of your virtues and your craft.) A carpenter who takes pride in clean dovetail joints for the right reason isn't doing it for the applause or market comparative advantage. Excellence is what it means to fully inhabit your role. Every act of integrity, every moment of compassion, is practice refining the techne of being a virtuous human, moving toward what a fully realized version of yourself looks like. Telos without theology.Buddhism adds something I find clarifying rather than deflating: The boundary between my suffering and everyone else's is not a clear line, so my wellbeing is not categorically more important than anyone else's.So what's the point? Cruelty corrodes you. Integrity builds something worth inhabiting. Reducing suffering matters because suffering matters, full stop. The absence of divine reward doesn't change any of that. You can choose to self control in ways a lion cannot, which is it's own reward.
>>34559145
>>34559268not an argument.
>>34559276stop posting
Tell me OP, if Istripped all my clothes off and randomly ran all around your apartment yelling at you while you chase me to get out and I shit in my hand and throw it at your computer monitor and run off never to be seen again, would you like it? Exactly morality is necessary.
>>34559285
>>34557001Because it affirms you are well and truly better than everyone else.Having a robust, well-developed moral code and actually acting on it gives you a sense of superiority and self-actualization nothing else can. There's a sort of self-assurance you just can't get through any other means, because morality is the only virtue that is internally judged as opposed to externally judged. If you make morality your core point of pride, there is literally nothing anyone can do to ever take that away from you. Ever. Rich men can become poor, strong men can become weak, beloved men can become hated, but the moral man is always moral.People who see morality as an unfortunate appearance they must maintain in the pursuit of wealth or power or pleasure have no idea how much inner peace they miss out on. Living morally lets you look at someone who is conventionally successful in every way and genuinely, sincerely feel *they* are failures lacking the one true virtue.This all sounds a bit self-aggrandizing but I really do mean everything I've said. If you value success over being good, I really do think you would benefit from re-evaluating your values.
>>34559285I don't need a god damn adjective if the action of me being able to wake up in a great country and great state makes me happy.
>>34559286Retards are more mature than whiney 12 year olds who won't stop crying because his little sister wanted to get a carousel ride when he wanted his gay ass roller coaster ride at the theme park. Oh look at me I'm selfishly anon bitching about how I lost at life because of the roller coaster ride. Well it was a gay ride to begin with so that was why you lost it. Are you gonna continue being gay your entire life because of missing opportunities like that?
>>34557001>What is the point of reducing suffering, treating others with respect, having integrity, etc?Other people probably have things you need/want and it's generally easier to get things through cooperation than force.Plus being mean feels bad.
>>34559070>Moral realism doesn't need God as its foundation any more than mathematics or gravity doesAll three of those things actually do require a prime mover or first cause, which is what people are referring to when they say God. It's an axiomatic logical truth that order and law cannot come from nothingness, meaning the laws that order geometry and math and morality must belong to a cause or substrate that's ontologically prior.
>>34559604>All three of those things actually do require a prime mover or first causeThat's not really true. Moral realism just requires that you believe something is objectively true in the material sense, not necessarily objectively true in a transcendental cosmic sense. So, for example, utilitarians could be described as moral realists because they think suffering is bad independent of what any particular culture or ethical code claims. The anon you replied to sounds like a utilitarian moral realist.You could say they can't definitively prove their assertions about morality true without invoking a transcendent being, which is probably true, but to a secular moral realist that wouldn't make their assertions about morality any less objectively true. They'd still claim that suffering is obviously, observably bad and that this is intuitively true regardless of culture. Their position is sort of like, "I am certain 2+2=4 even if I can't be sure what 2 is because everything breaks when you assume 2+2 does not equal 4." Which I think could reasonably be described an assertion of objective truth.TL;DR: Moral realism just requires you think there is a descriptively true set of moral facts, not necessarily a prescriptively true set of moral facts.
>>34559604Wrong. Moral facts are irreducibly normative and not identical to natural facts, not requiring a prime mover. e.g., Enoch's "robust realism" positing that normative truths are simply there, as part of the furniture of the universe, the way mathematical objects are. They're ontologically primitive, not derived. A prime mover would just push the regress back (why does God's nature make something good?) Either God's will is arbitrary (Euthyphro dilemma) or it tracks something independently true (which is the case) in which case that independent truth is the real ground, not God. God is bound by moral truth and cannot will, for instance, rape and murder are suddenly good, even if he wanted them to be. Basic moral truths are necessarily true in the same way logical or mathematical truths are and not contingent on any prior fact, circumstances, or actors.
>>34557001Getting yourself involved in bad stuff tends to draw bad stuff towards you. For example, if you are involved in dealing drugs, you tend to attract people who want to beat you up randomly. Meanwhile, a person who does not deal drugs has a minimal risk of getting beaten up randomly.
>>34557001>divinely rewardMorality is social networking.All social creatures have "morality" because they have to exist in groups.It's just math.
>>34557001If you have to ask, you'll never understand the answer. It's like someone who was born completely blind asking someone else to explain what colours look like. You don't have the ability to understand the answer.If you want a practical reason, it's that if you treat other people well, they will treat you well. If you have more of something than you need and you donate some to a person who has less than they need, then when the roles are reversed and you need more than you have, they and other people you've been good to in the past will help you out; without that help, you're fucked. Or, to put it another way, groups of people can achieve things that individuals can't, and those achievements benefit the entire group. But thinking in those terms won't help you to understand how a normal person thinks and feels.
>>34560455>Moral realism just requires that you believe something is objectively true in the material sense, not necessarily objectively true in a transcendental cosmic senseThat would result in an incoherent worldview, because it would make matter responsible for the laws that dictate matter's behavior. Matter can't be responsible for the laws of physics if it also must obey the laws of physics, meaning the laws of physics need to transcend the physical world. Not to say that no one holds those views, but their logic is necessarily unsound.>>34560499>They're ontologically primitive, not derivedAnything that's ontologically primitive must necessarily be causative and possess the properties that its subsequent effects inherit. To say that things that exist in the world, such as life, mind, and morality, is to say that they must also exist in whatever is most primitive or originative. Which is to say, it's no different from saying that the universe has life, mind and is responsible for writing laws, which would mean that you're saying the universe itself is God.>A prime mover would just push the regress backNo, that doesn't occur because the first cause is Goodness itself. Or to put it in other terms, if Truth and Good are synonymous, which they necessarily are, then they aren't arbitrarily chosen as much as they simply "are", and our goodness is measured by the extent to which we participate in those eternal principles. And mathematical statements are also true insofar as they obey and participate in logic.>Basic moral truths are necessarily true in the same way logical or mathematical truths are and not contingent on any prior fact, circumstances, or actors.Laws either are the first cause or they're contingent on the first cause. But to say that they are the first cause is the same as to say that they are God, so it only introduces a distinction without a difference.
