Morality has nothing to do with the mind or brain. It makes no difference whether a person is psychotic, “normal”, or even comatose. What Jesus taught is that morality isn’t about ethics, but aesthetics. The demon possessed man is not condemned. The adultress is forgiven. The tax collectors and prostitutes are good dinner companions. Jesus understood that within — within — these people was a spirit that valued goodness. Their inability to express it, whether a physical or mental or cultural inability, had no bearing on the fact that their hearts yearned for edification. People often commit unethical acts for reasons other than having cold hearts; meanwhile, people often are do-gooders who otherwise have hearts as black as night. There is no such thing as objective moral judgment, which He made plain. That’s why He stressed that neither He nor His Father judges anyone. The psychotic cannot help that his brain is miswired, and that miswiring has no bearing on his moral state.
The notion of an immoral subtext does not fit into my worldview. The universe is amoral. Morality is pertinent only to the spiritual world.
The Tristram Shandy you used in the context of a post-modern essence.
Well, I don’t know. I haven’t read the story. I presumed from your context that you were talking about a science fiction novel that used concepts inconceivable to earlier minds. If you mean something else, I’m open to revising my remarks.
I’m not talking about moral culpability here - though I agree with you. I don’t think we can tell that there is a moral heart inside a psychotic. The psychotic is not morally responsible for his actions because he would be unable to act on his inner moral desires if he had them, and cannot keep from acting on his immoral ones if he doesn’t. But how can a person be said to have moral free will if he is incapable of acting on it?
The universe is amoral, I agree, but if we have moral free will we aren’t. Or shouldn’t be. By immoral subtext, I mean one that inspires people to do immoral things. “The Sorrows of Young Werther” inspired young men to commit suicide - it was not intentionally immoral, but I think an argument could be made by some people that it is. (Not by me.) (I want to keep this on a higher plane than we’d get to if we discussed porn movies. ) In any case, whatever your thoughts are about the spiritual world, some things can cause pain for people in the physical world.
I get it now. No, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne was written in the mid-1700s. It is supposedly the autobiography of Tristram Shandy, but the first third of the book passes before he is even born, and I’m not sure he reaches more than a few years of age during it. The book contains the first instance of “This Page Intentionally Left Blank” a section soliciting a noble patron, with the note that the section doing the soliciting would be removed when one showed up, and a discussion of how many chapters there are to be. Sterne was a reverend - one part early in the book has Tristram’s father, Uncle Toby, and some visitors reviewing and joking about one of Sterne’s sermons. One book is a wonderful parody of travel writing, as valid today as it was then. (There is a movie just out on this unfilmable book, about filming a Tristram Shandy movie, which is quite in keeping with the book - it hasn’t gotten to my neck of the woods yet.) So, this is indeed a post-modern book from 1763. The edition I read had commentary from the time of publication up to the present, and each writer found subtexts in it suitable for their period.
So, if there is a post modern essence, it is definitely to be found in this book centuries before anyone ever defined the term post-modern. Which is why it seemed like a good example.
Because, again, the morality is not in the action. Actions happen in the universe. The morality is in the spirit, the heart, the innermost essence. Whenever deeds are done, the moral dilemma has long since been resolved before the action ever begins. Suppose I am a man who longs to be merciful and kind, but whose brain tricks me into smashing your head. I cannot be said to have committed an immoral act because my essential self was not represented by my physical self. It cannot be had both ways here: if the physical world is the real world, then physical acts are moral or immoral in se; but if the spiritual world is the real world, then physical acts are nothing more than probabilities collapsing.
You rightly divide, in my opinion, the universe from reality — the universe is amoral, but we are not. We, therefore, are not a part of the universe. (Except, of course, in the trivial sense of our physical bodies, the same way that asteroids and lemurs are part of the universe.) In the same way, it is important to divide the suicidal subtext from the evil that conceived it. Otherwise, we end up judging morality by actions. We see the gentleman feeding a hungry beggar and think to ourselves, ‘What a good man!’ But unbeknownst to us, the gentleman’s intention is to lure the beggar into a car where he will be sodomized and murdered.
Clovis stones existed for thousands of years before the town in New Mexico was founded, but that doesn’t mean that the essence of the stones emerged when the term for them was coined. In fact, “essence” itself (or the Latin essentia) was a term made up by Roman translators who encountered the Greek phrase we discussed earlier, meaning “that which it is to be”. In fact, if postmodernism is nothing more than a throwback to eighteenth century avant-guard, then it is confirmation of essentialism. Unless the writer drew words randomly from a hat, the essence of what he was writing was already there.
That’s unfortunate because it means you misquoted me deliberately. Ordinarilly, I would report such a thing, but in your case, I’m increasingly given to believing that you simply can’t help it. On the remote chance that there’s any getting through to you at all, “cannot NOT” means “must”. You got the whole thing completely backwards.
Certainly intent is crucial. God sees our true heart not what we present to others. You see lots of talk in the NT abut nothing remaining hidden, all will be revealed, and the truth will set you free. I think that’s an important part of the journey. To examine our own hearts and seek to grow. To not carry animosity and malice around.
So as Jesus teaches , if you preform a good deed but your desire is to be seen and thought well of rather than to really do good, then your reward may be superficial. Killing in self defense or defense of others is not the same moral act as revenge or for personal gain.
The question of the psychotic is puzzling to me. Even if we kill in self defense there are repercussions on a spiritual level. Someone who is wired wrong and commits certain acts may not have the same motivation as someone who coldly calculates to commit an evil act but there must be some repercussions as we act and struggle with our personal weaknesses.
Then again, we look at things pretty superficially according to Jesus. His comparison was that if we hate it’s the same as murder. That makes most people serial killers I guess.
In the Bible it’s mentioned several times that we will be judged by our works and rewarded according to our deeds. What do you make of that? I always took it to mean the sum total. No matter how much we pretend in front of others in the end our actions do reveal much of what spirit resides in us. Jesus qualifies this further in his story about the believers that claim to have cast out devils in his name and praise him only to be rejected while others who committed acts of kindness with no expectation of reward were welcomed.
C.S. Lewis comments in * Mere Christianity* that we will be judged by our nature, the way he uses it seems to parallel Lib’s essence.
If someone is wired to do evil acts and strives against his physical condition, he will be rewarded. Most of us are wired without sadistic tendencies so our actions will be held to a different level, although the expectations are the same. Is that coming out right? Let me try again:
A person is physically compelled to perform action X. The person struggles and, though the person commits action X, the struggle to be >X is the part that matters spiritually.
A person has no anti-societal complications and the thought of committing action X is abhorrent. The person is easily capable of action Y, yet they never strive for > Y, they will be “rewarded” for their lack of effort.
According to our nature. Well there’s a can of worms. I don’t see it as that simple although I understand the concept. We cannot judge the inner workings of others . I also believe that the challenges we face as we deal with people with different wiring is our own test. Do we forgive? Do we judge? Do we help or avoid? All that stuff.
Still, I have a question about how this relates to certain passages in the Bible such as
I am far from a Bible literalist. I agree that it is our inner motive and heart that is judged, but it seems to me that in the NT Jesus is saying that our deeds will reflect the nature of that inner spirit.
Jesus teaches that we will be judged by His words. He explicitly removes the agency of judgment entirely. He says first that “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22). He then waives His very own right to judge as well: “You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one.” (John 8:15) This leads me to believe that our judgment is our own aesthetical taste — i.e., how much do we value His words? If we value them, then we will go to Him. If we do not, then we will walk away from Him. We are our own judges.
Hmmmm In a sense I agree. The quotes I gave were also the words of Christ. Telling us our actions must change as we strive to change our hearts. Can we forgive others and ourselves without a change in our actions?
I am a proponent of consequences of our own choices rather than any kind of judgement and punishment thing. The Spirit calls to us and we choose to follow or not. Those choices bring consequences. Is that what you mean?
I’ll have to disagree here and leave it at that. I don’t think we can peer into the event horizon of someone else’s head. If god can, he ain’t talking.
One person I know said that morality is inherently god-based, and that ethics should be used in the non-religious context.
Clearly ethical judgements without complete information can be incorrect. The act of slicing someone open with a knife has a much different context in the street or in the operating room.
The only way we can judge anyone is by their actions. But intent has a lot to do with it. Only conscious entities can act morally (ethically) or immorally. We do confuse things by acting as if actions by non-conscious entities are done conciously. So, we say a dog is bad, or that an earthquake is evil.
Course I don’t think we can be a part of the universe except in the trivial physical way you mention.
When we pass judgement on someone for their actions, we are not passing a moral judgement. We are assigning specific consequences for an action. Those consequences are for the protection of society, the rehabilitation of the offender, or whatever else you want to attribute to the penal system. This social and ethical construct has nothing to do with morality. Like Lib stated previously:
The actions have consequences yet his essence has yet to be judged.
P.S. If I am butchering this, let me know. I’m trying to explain the essentialist position without quoting Lib constantly.
I think this depends on the situation or perhaps the number of occurrence. If someone is dishonest with me in some way I can forgive and if they demonstrate they are striving to be honest then we can remain friends. I might just overlook the occasional dishonesty or other foible as just being human. If the behavior continues I might decide my former friend is not trustworthy and decide to no longer be friends. Wouldn’t that be a moral judgement?
Certainly, choices bring consequences. But this choice is a choice of aesthetics, not ethics. Our Lord’s whole ministry was about fulfilling dead and stale rules with His own actual meaning; that is, giving value to the ethical principles. It really isn’t a matter of doing right or wrong, but a matter of valuing goodness over evil. And the essence of goodness is edification. His word edifies, and those who value it are built up, made new, increased. Those who hold it worthless are destroyed, but only because they do not value edification. They value destruction.
Great verses cosmosdan. Do we hold children to the same level of ethics that we do adults? Of course not. They can not understand that some things are not acceptable. As they mature, more and more of the ethical construct is revealed to them. But what if someone was somehow prevented from achieving that maturity? Many mentally handicapped people can only understand ethics at a basic level. Yet we still affirm them when they make decisions that we see as being good.
So it is with what C S Lewis called our nature (read that: essence). Where is the line drawn between deeds and ability to commit deeds? Someone who is mentally handicapped may not understand giving money to charity but sharing some of their food with a person is just as noble an act, even if it is seemingly insignificant in the world. A psychopath can not help what he is. But he makes decisions based on what he values, although how those decisions manifest themselves after his brain interprets them may not be viewed as moral.
As an aside, I just got your name. My mind insisted on dropping the second ‘s’. I thought it was a play on cosmonaut(sp?), which I thought was pretty cool
No. This was long before I found sdmb, and the person in question was an obnoxious atheist. This was about the only intelligent thing he said. None of it matches you. He in fact did not believe morality existed or was meaningful.
Sometimes. But sometimes people fall prey to the pathetic fallacy and act as if dogs mean to act in a specific way. Those are the people who punish out of spite, not to train. Sometimes people have a hard time imagining that animals are not intelligent - hence stories from Aesop’s Fables to Roadrunner cartoons to Watership Down.
I don’t have the slightest clue about why you agree with me, my friend. Everything I’ve been saying has been from the absolute physicalist point of view. Maybe they do converge after all.
I meant a moral judgement, not a legal one. But the legal system does distinguish between those who are moral actors and those incapable of distinguishing moral from immoral actions - the insane and children. Even those people can be incarcerated in some way to protect society, but it is usually not considered as punishment.
How can an essence be juddged? How can one discern an essence except through actions and the reporting of the person of his inner state (which may be unreliable.) We can try to fool the person into revealing his inner state through psychological tests. We can determine physiologically that the person is somehow forced by body chemistry into violent acts, say. But none of this lets us morally judge him, except through his interactions with others.
As an example, consider the murderers on death row for whom people try to get a pardon because the person reformed. Some people might say that even if the guy turned into a saint there is no reason not to kill him, but most people oppose leniency because they don’t trust him. Maybe God knows, we don’t. And I don’t think there really is a moral essence to find.
That’s very interesting. A search will show that I’ve made the point several times that I consider morality to be that which concerns what is between a man and his God or conscience, whereas ethics concerns what is between a man and his fellow man.
Usually, when I hear people say that a dog was bad, it is a metaphor for the dog pissed them off.
I’ve often said that the atheist who loves is closer to God than the theist who does not. In the end, all the labels and all the brains knotted up by them fall away, and we are left with naked spirits. That’s when we discover who our brothers and sisters are.
) In any case, whatever your thoughts are about the spiritual world, some things can cause pain for people in the physical world.