[aikah]

> morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules.

One could argue morals should be based on the survival of mankind. Because that's the only positive goal of it, to survive as long as possible,though, ultimately mankind will come to an end,that's inevitable. On the other hand, as long as there is energy,artificial intelligence could outlast us.It would be mankind's testament and ultimate legacy. I always thought that, if we were to find another alien civilization,it would be through the AI they designed or in form of pure data. And it's probable that it would be available as binary data too.

[keane]

No, AnimalMuppet is correct. We are unable to value the survival of mankind as objectively good, as we have no empirical evidence to do so (more accurately: we cannot infer an Ought from an Is).

See this for more on why: http://liamk.org/is-love-real/

Our options are Nihilism/Zen/Absurdity or Theism. And if the former is true, it doesn't matter if we hold the latter. As CS Lewis put it, if the Theists are wrong after all they would have merely paid the universe a compliment it would not have deserved.

[dragonwriter]

> Our options are Nihilism/Zen/Absurdity or Theism.

Utilitarianism -- and many others -- are equally possible. You can assume any set of moral axioms (including those of utilitarianism) without assuming God (the defining assumption of Theism) -- and, in fact, Theism in and of itself gets you nothing, except that it usually is coupled with assumptions about what God wills and the moral axiom that what God wills is what we ought to seek.

[keane]

> Utilitarianism -- and many others -- are equally possible.

You misunderstand the dichotomy. This is not about what we can do, humans can delude themselves all the time. The question is about what is logically consistent.

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence" applies in a purely natural universe, which means that if there is no God, we can dismiss Utilitarianism (and all the others) as there is no evidence for it. Only if the universe is supernatural (if God exists) do things change.

[locopati]

Zen is not nihilism (unless you're bandying about the word in a way that has nothing to do with the actual practice of Zen)

[keane]

The goal of Zen and all Buddhism is to achieve "Enlightenment", a state of mind where one fully internalises the rather Daoist idea (remember the Yin Yang) that God does not exist and due to this Good and Evil are not different at all (an illusion) but are one and the same. Believing that Right and Wrong are equivalent is the same as denying they exist at all, hence Nihilism.

All of the practices done before this (meditation, compassion, tantra, etc) are--as in other branches of Hindu and Dharmic faiths--understood to be merely optional "yogas" or activities to fill the time and enjoy oneself in a Nihilistic world.

[locopati]

This is a complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Buddhism, which is the Middle Path between nihilism (a denial of existence) and eternalism (a belief in permanence or independence). Among the foundational beliefs are impermanence, interdependence, and the emptiness of self-existence all phenomena; or from another angle, suffering, the cause of suffering, that suffering can cease, the means of achieving that cessation. The practices are not meant to "fill the time" but are the means of seeing reality clearly.

[keane]

Not really. First off, Nihilism does not deny that we or the universe exist but instead "Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless". In Buddhism, both good and evil has no real existence, being part of the illusory world of phenomena. As I said before, believing that Right and Wrong are equivalent is the same as denying they exist at all and this is what I meant by Nihilism.

Additionally, the practices of Buddhism are said to lead to Enlightenment, but even for the Buddhist, wanting Enlightenment is a huge mistake as Moksha/Nirvana is available at all times, without the practices, as our default status. As Jed McKenna notes: Why does Buddhism rarely produce Buddhas? It is because Buddhist practices ("yogas") are not able to transmit the realization that Self is Illusion and All is Nothingness. If you read the Anathapindika you'll see that Siddhartha denied that the Creator God (issara-karaṇa-vāda) existed, that he claimed there was no free will, but even though every thing is deterministic we should practice good anyway.

  Let us, then, abandon the heresy of worshipping the Creator God and of praying to him;
  let us no longer lose ourselves in vain speculations of profitless subtleties;
  let us surrender self and all selfishness,
  and as all things are fixed by causation,
  let us practise good so that good may result from our actions.

Rather than attempt to understand Buddhism as if it exists in a vacuum, studying the wider Hindu philosophy that it developed from and especially Nondualism and Vedanta will likely help you understand what Siddhartha was trying to convey. It is absolutely Nihilistic.

[eli_gottlieb]

>(more accurately: we cannot infer an Ought from an Is).

Oughts cannot mean anything in the first place unless they ultimately reduce to some kind of is-checkable fact.

[keane]

This would give you Nihilism. Theism disagrees.

[eli_gottlieb]

>This would give you Nihilism.

The Is-Ought Problem and the Open Question Argument are not so conclusive as to justify nihilism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_naturalism

[keane]

If the world is material (natural) only, then the maxim of Hitchens and Sagan applies: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". You assert humans have value. There is no empirical evidence of this claim. This leaves you with Moral Nonrealism.

Only if the world is posited to be something beyond material (supernatural), can we suggest values are Real and hold to Moral Realism. Anytime we suggest that humans have value or that moral statements correspond to real truths, we have abandoned empiricism and have entered the realm of faith.

[eli_gottlieb]

>You assert humans have value. There is no empirical evidence of this claim.

But of course there is. Humans have value to humans. You are assuming that "have value" requires a supernatural grounding.

[andrewflnr]

Survival of humanity is an arbitrary, made-up goal, from a materialist perspective, anyway.

[aikah]

Why is it arbitrary? every species on that planet is "programmed" to reproduce and thrive, and we are no different.

[andrewflnr]

Yes, absolutely, people are programmed to survive just like every other life form out there, so why favor humans? Just because we're the smartest? If I destroy humanity to ensure my survival, in what sense is that bad, since after all I'm just following my programming to survive.

When we talk about morality, we're looking for something that should happen, deeper than what does happen or what anything wants to happen.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Yes, absolutely, people are programmed to survive just like every other life form out there, so why favor humans?

Because we happen to be humans. But there's also lots of other creatures out there to favor: monkeys, dogs, that sort of thing.

>When we talk about morality, we're looking for something that should happen, deeper than what does happen or what anything wants to happen.

The word "should" becomes utterly meaningless if it has nothing to do with what we want. What do you think "should" would mean if I proved conclusively to you "should" exterminate all life on Earth? It's an ungrounded symbol if it doesn't take your real desires into account.

>“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” -- Immanuel Kant

[andrewflnr]

My point is that "should" is redundant with "want" in a materialist viewpoint. It only makes sense to talk about "should" separately from desire if they're not necessarily the same. Is this not tautological? You need some other set of axioms describing some goal other than want-satisfaction and an assertion that it's true for everyone before you can meaningfully call it "morality", a system containing "should". Otherwise it is, as you put it, an ungrounded symbol.

In other words, a moral system needs to answer the question "why should I give a #$@*?". Why not let the world burn if i feel like it? Why not just that part over there that's only being used by people I don't like and don't depend on? Your Kant quote is a succinct statement of the commands of most moral systems, but doesn't answer the real question. If there's nothing more to the universe then we can see, only matter in odd configurations, I don't see how it can be answered.

P.S. I'm not sure what you meant by "real desires", but it bears mentioning that there exist people and other beings whose real desires are purely destructive, to others and themselves; self interest in the usual sense (survival and comfort) is not necessarily relevant. Think about people we class as "mentally ill" (which really just means outlier, since our "healthy" baseline is just the average). If you didn't mean to imply that no one has a "real desire" in some sense to do "evil" things like destroy all life on earth, then you can probably ignore this part, but it had to be said