Argument:
[ Human behavior comes only from natural needs, instinct, and logical thought processes. The idea of morality is strange, illogical, and is not necessary. ]
First I need you to be open-minded and willing to be completely objective. I want you to imagine being raised by animals in the jungle, sort of like Mowgli in the Jungle Book. Unlike the Disney movie, I need you to imagine Mowgli being raised without speech. No words. Okay? Great. Also, the Jungle Book implemented moral teachings; what I am doing here is almost the complete opposite.
I think we can all agree that we have a natural sort of pulling for something, a natural hunger for things. This includes a hunger for food, rest, sex, etc. The longer this hunger exists, the more uneasy we become (although not necessarily, e.g. hunger for sex can be suppressed ;). Obviously this hunger is different from person to person.
What comes next? Assuming we are able, we like very much to pursue our desire. This is an example of human behavior that stems from a natural need of something. Since we are thinking beings, along with many other animals, we will probably think about how to acquire what we want. We will weigh our options and go with the route that will benefit us the most.
Human behavior will also be the result of our instincts, where an instinct is a natural sort of response to stimuli . Depending on the circumstance we may have time to think about the proper reaction - the reaction that will again result in the most benefit to us. We may also train ourselves to react a certain way like we do with marital arts.
I just want to clarity something: when say natural, I mean according to our genetic makeup and how are brains are formed. Without any outside teaching, we will be automatically equipped with a need/hunger and a response mechanism. Everyone is different in their body's makeup and therefore have different needs and instincts. We often here about psychopaths and their innate want to hurt others. This may be rare in the human population, but it might also be the case that there are more of these kinds of people out there who are able to suppress this need. In any case, we all have different wants, needs, and desires. Our thought processes are often very different too.
Let's think back to our friend Mowgli. He grows up completely in the woods with no spoken language. Do you think he has any concept of God? What about the idea of morality? I kind of doubt it. How does he make his decisions? He makes them according to his needs and instinct and his ever developing thought process.
Morality today is a big deal among the human population, as is religion and God. Many like to think that morality is universal and that there is a unique set of rules that everyone should follow. Does that sound familiar to you? It sounds to me like the 10 commandments. Morality is defined as a set of principles concerning the distinction between what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'.
I think over the span of time that humans have occupied the Earth, many different tribes, organizations, etc have created their own Morality or Moral Code in which the people of that group came together and lumped their needs and instincts (given certain situations) and came up with an averaged set of policies which everyone should follow. Morality is often interchanged with the word, 'ethics'.
Let's discuss the words 'right' and 'wrong'. Obviously the English language is very confusing because there are so many words with double meanings. When performing a procedure like starting your car, there is a right way to start it and there is a wrong way to attempt to start it. The two words are also used in matters of morality and religion. When not dealing with a procedure, the 'right' thing to do is a reaction in accordance with that particular morality. A 'wrong' action goes against the morality or moral code.
It should be clear now that a 'moral code' or 'code of ethics' are lists made by either an individual or a group; in the latter, they most likely took an average of what everyone thought was 'right'. By 'right', I mean according to each person's sense of instinct. Since instinct varies from person to person, there is no possible way for it to be universal. It is possible that a large portion of the human population agrees with many aspects of every groups system of morality, but it is not guaranteed.
As a result of this kind of thinking, I do not follow any moral code. I follow my instincts, which are different than yours (although I'm sure we have a lot in common). I don't see 'right' and 'wrong' choices - I see choices and outcomes that benefit me the most. I cannot be a judge as to whether another person's choices are 'right' or 'wrong', because they have different needs and instincts. Might I avoid the person if they decide to kill someone for no apparent reason? Absolutely. But I don't say they did something 'wrong' or 'evil'. People may say that I am a moral and ethical person, but I certainly don't follow any code.
* I'd like to add one more thing because it might not have been obvious. While I am indeed a selfish individual ( I think we all are) and I actually made a post about it a while back, I do things for others. Why do I do things for others? Because it makes me feel good. It is part of who I am as an individual, part of my natural needs to sometimes help others depending on the situation. I may appear to be self-less, but I'm doing it because it is going to satisfy my desire to help others.
Well, I hope that made some sense. :) "And that's all I have to say about that... " - Forest Gump
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[What follows is experimentation only]
Here's my argument plain and simple:
Instinct and logical thought processes are the only driving forces for human behavior assuming the human is not under a false belief; if the person is under a false belief, obviously it is the 3rd driving force. I intend to argue that the idea of morality leads to false beliefs.
Personally, I think that I am driven by the first 2 forces. That is to say I don't follow any structure of morality.
Let's start off with some definitions since they are critical to any argument; I'll be pulling them from google's 'define:' function in their search bar.
Morality:
1. Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
2. Behavior as it is affected by the observation of these principles.
Conscience:
1. An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior.
Instinct:
1. An innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli: "predatory instincts".
2. A natural or intuitive way of acting or thinking: "rely on your instincts".
Now that we have the definitions out of the way, I can start my argument. Let's start off by proposing that we can define anything we can think of. We can even get it published in a dictionary if 1. we can get enough people backing the idea and 2. we can convince the publishers to publish the proposed definition. Imagine for a second that the idea of God had never come up before today. All of a sudden I propose just now the idea that there is an all powerful being who created the universe. So I define 'God' to be just that. Will I be able to publish this in a dictionary? Unless I can convince people that my idea is a real thing, the odds are I won't be able to. I wouldn't have a sound argument for the existence of such a being. Contrary to what some people might believe, there is not a single argument that proves that God exists. Of course, 'God' is in the dictionary under a few definitions depending on the religion it is referring to. That is of course because of the very large backing to the idea of a God.
So that is precisely my point - definitions are ideas and the ideas don't necessarily have any concrete basis in real life. Now you could argue, and I tend to agree with this argument - that any idea which we define, we cannot prove to have any correlation to reality, no matter what the idea is (unless it is a logic or mathematical-based idea). Some ideas and definitions are meant to have some correlation to our reality while others are purely logical.
Let's give an example to further illustrate my point. I'm going to define a flying spaghetti monster to be an animal made completely out of pasta which only appears at night in Antarctica on the 5th of October. This is a definition. Do you think the idea exists in our reality? Probably not, but of course we can't prove that it doesn't. The same is true for any definitions we can think of or that already exist.
Okay, so let's get to the bigger point of this blog. Morality!
But first I'd like to say that in order to argue, you need to make your argument directly from definitions and implications of the definitions. Implications are deductions that you can make logically. In fact, we don't prove definitions, we prove the implications. For example, we define a triangle as a figure with three sides. We can prove that the interior angles always add up to 180 degrees (this is the implication). We prove the implication from the definition.
Morality has a definition, just like anything else. Like I explained before, it has gotten a lot of attentions like the idea of 'God'. The idea of morality is much much different than the idea of a triangle - it is much more complicated and from my point of view it is much more like my idea of a flying spaghetti monster. From a logical point of view, assuming I can understand the argument I have no choice but to believe that all triangles have an interior sum of angles of 180 degrees. If I chose not to believe it, then I would be going against logic and have no basis for argument and proof.
So are there any implications we can prove from the definition of morality? Let's state the definition again:
Morality:
1. Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
2. Behavior as it is affected by the observation of these principles.
This is a work in progress but I will publish it now just in case anyone wants to help me finish it.... I haven't yet figured out how to explain what I'm thinking....
To be continued...
