morality where it comes from

Rev_Devilin
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morality where it comes from

Morality, just jolted this down quickly, I'm sure there's plenty of mistakes in here

knowing the difference between right or wrong. good and bad.

Do something beneficial and you're brain rewards you, with some nice chemicals which makes you feel good. eat reproduce and get rewarded. ( or you can bypass the doing something beneficial and just buy some drugs instead. ecstasy is available from all bad street corners in the red light district ) getting chemically rewarded for eating procreation ect ect. will inspire you to seek these things out to get more chemical rewards.not getting chemically rewarded for doing things would make you less inspired to do them. Natural selection has rewarded the individuals that have evolved the chemical reward system. Those that didn't evolve the system ain't around to tell us about it

Close physical contact with another animal from the same species releases chemicals which makes you feel good docile, If it didn't and you're a social animal relying upon group protection.natural selection would kill you off
If an animal from the same species took a bite out of you. this would release chemicals which would make you feel bad pain. If it didn't you just get eaten natural selection has killed you off
This also works with animals from other species. pet a cat and you feel good. cat bites you yada yada. Of course this works vice versa as well the cat wouldn't be too happy if you took a bite out of it. but it's extremely happy if you tickle it behind its ears

So you have two chemicals in yar head ( there are more but let's keep it simple for the mo ) docile/pain or good/bad

When in a social group
You can benefit from interactions within the social group. you pick fleas off your neighbor. your neighbor has less fleas and is a healthyer individual because of it and it has a greater chance of survival. If everybody in the group picks fleas off each other then the group as a whole benefits. Close physical contact releases chemicals which make you feel good. So you feel good and the group benefits and vice versa

Thus morality or you pick fleas off my back. and I'll pick fleas of yours

And it is based on the understanding of mutually beneficial behavior in any social group of animals. good or bad are simple chemical reactions.

Morality is the natural course of the brains evolution in a social group


e303
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Well Justics is hard to

Well Justics is hard to find in the animal word so I will leave it at that.

I also wonder about sympathy so lets look at that.  ( BTW I know some animals have show what seems to be some sense of empathy.) 

From the wiki...

"Sympathy exists when the feelings or emotions of one person give rise to similar feelings in another person, creating a state of shared feeling. In common usage, sympathy is usually the sharing of unhappiness or suffering, but it can also refer to sharing other (positive) emotions as well. In a broader sense, it can refer to the sharing of political or ideological sentiments, such as in the phrase "a communist sympathiser".

The psychological state of sympathy is closely linked with that of empathy, but is not identical to it. Empathy refers to the ability to perceive and directly experientially feel another person's emotions as they feel them, but makes no statement as to how they are viewed. Sympathy, by contrast, implies a degree of equal feeling, that is, the sympathiser views the matter similarly to how the person themselves does. It thus implies concern, or care or a wish to alleviate negative feelings others are experiencing."

I would like to see true symapthy and justice that any 2 bit behaviorist can't observe and place any semblence of this emotion as learned by effect.

"I felt in my bones that this universe does not explain itself." ~ C. S. Lewis


Rigor_OMortis
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Quote:Well Justics is hard

Quote:
Well Justics is hard to find in the animal word so I will leave it at that.

Actually, it's far easier to find than in the human world. Example: you screw the alpha male's sexual mate(s) and he finds out, chances are that you will get at least a thorough beating. They care for no procedural standards Smiling

Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/


Yellow_Number_Five
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Two words: empathy and

Two words: empathy and reciprocity - there really isn't anything more to it than that.


Rev_Devilin
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e303 wrote:

e303 wrote:

Well Justics is hard to find in the animal word so I will leave it at that.

it's not that hard when you look,

"Sometimes lower level chimps form alliances to challenge authority"

http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/KnowledgeWorkers.shtml 

justice and liberty for all Smiling

[MOD EDIT - fixed link] 

 

 


zntneo
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Yellow_Number_Five

Yellow_Number_Five wrote:

Two words: empathy and reciprocity - there really isn't anything more to it than that.

but what if you don't except these 2? What if you have no empathy? How can you say that we should be empathitc?  How can we say something is wrong then? 


JeremiahSmith
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zntneo wrote: but what if

zntneo wrote:
but what if you don't except these 2? What if you have no empathy? How can you say that we should be empathitc? How can we say something is wrong then?

No empathy is pretty much the defining characteristic of a sociopath. 

Götter sind für Arten, die sich selbst verraten -- in den Glauben flüchten um sich hinzurichten. Menschen brauchen Götter um sich zu verletzen, um sich zu vernichten -- das sind wir.


zntneo
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JeremiahSmith wrote:   No

JeremiahSmith wrote:

 

No empathy is pretty much the defining characteristic of a sociopath. 

yea i know but can't you choose to not be empathic? Can't you just not care? 


JeremiahSmith
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zntneo

zntneo wrote:
JeremiahSmith wrote:

 

No empathy is pretty much the defining characteristic of a sociopath.

yea i know but can't you choose to not be empathic? Can't you just not care?

Empathy is ingrained in most people since birth. It's not some philosophy or belief system you can just ignore, it's an ingrained part of human thought. Some people manage to ignore it, like hit men, but it takes time, actual effort, and a lot of self-justification that these people aren't deserving of empathy. And I would imagine even hit men have some people they won't kill, like kids. 

In any case, if you really think it's that easy to turn off empathy, try going around hurting people and making them cry and see how much you can take before you decide you're a douchebag and stop.

Götter sind für Arten, die sich selbst verraten -- in den Glauben flüchten um sich hinzurichten. Menschen brauchen Götter um sich zu verletzen, um sich zu vernichten -- das sind wir.