re moraltiy was re political atheists in article ql ekinn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes what if i act morally for no particular reason then am i moral what if morality is instinctive as in most animals saying that morality is instinctive in animals is an attempt to assume your conclusion which conclusion you conclusion correct me if i err that the behaviour which is instinctive in animals is a natural moral system see we are disagreeing on the definition of moral here earlier you said that it must be a conscious act by your definition no instinctive behavior pattern could be an act of morality you are trying to apply human terms to non humans pardon me i am trying to apply human terms to non humans i think there must be some confusion here i m the guy who is saying that if animal behaviour is instinctive then it does not have any moral sugnificance how does refusing to apply human terms to animals get turned into applying human terms i think that even if someone is not conscious of an alternative this does not prevent his behavior from being moral i m sure you do think this if you say so how about trying to convince me you don t think that morality is a behavior pattern what is human morality a moral action is one that is consistent with a given pattern that is we enforce a certain behavior as moral you keep getting this backwards you are trying to show that the behaviour pattern is a morality whether morality is a behavior pattern is irrelevant since there can be behavior pattern for example the motions of the planets that most all people would not call a morality i try to show it but by your definition it can t be shown i ve offered four times i think to accept your definition if you allow me to ascribe moral significence to the orbital motion of the planets and morality can be thought of a large class of princples it could be defined in terms of many things the laws of physics if you wish however it seems silly to talk of a moral planet because it obeys the laws of phyics it is less silly to talk about animals as they have at least some free will ah the law of silly and less silly what mr livesey finds intuitive is silly but what mr schneider finds intuitive is less silly now that s a devastating argument isn t it jon
