The idea that we can have laws seperate from morality is irrational.

If there is no moral principle justifying the use of power that is inherent in law, then that law by definition is tyrannical and should be opposed.

To put it another way, you cannot legislate anything but morality. The real question is whose morality is being legislated

Bastiat's "The Law" provides a perspective on this that is just as relevant today as it was in 1850, when he wrote it: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

James, why do we have laws against rape? Surely it is because rape harms innocent people and we consider harming innocent people to be wrong. So our prohibition of rape is based on a moral conviction and nothing else.

On the basis of your article it would appear that you must believe that there should be no law against rape. Is that really so?

If someone were to rape your wife/partner/daughter/mother would you stand by your claim that "we should let go and whatever happens, happens"?

Would you say in relation to the rapist, "the individual will make the choice which is right for them, and they will coome away from the experience positive and enlightened"?

Opposition to abortion is based on a moral view - that abortion is wrong because it harms the unborn child in that their life is taken. This is just like the moral opposition to rape in that it is wrong because it harms someone else.

Having a law against abortion is just as valid as a law against rape.

It seems to me that the underlying messgae here is 'less government intervention'. Let the individual decide.

This is pure Libertarianism.
Where everyone is free to do what ever they want to do whatever the cost.

GP & Coyote
I cannot believe you are serious. Let's deal with Coyote first.
Quote "This is pure Libertarianism.
Where everyone is free to do what ever they want to do whatever the cost." Completely wrong. What you are describing is known as "libertinism". Libertarianism is where you are free to accept the consequences of your own actions.

GP
The articles whole point is that the best basis for law is 'reason" not morality. Try reading the link provided by Winston Smith. One thing to think about. You compare abortion to rape. if that was so then it follows that the abortionst & the woman seeking the abortion should both suffer a jail sentence. Just like a rapist when he is caught. Does that seem like justice to you

Quote:

"Whether we are talking about RU486, abortion, or other things which are the subject of formal regulation, it is time to trust individuals to make the right choices. Controlling individuals through formal rules will not get us there.

Trust develops from just letting people make the decisions. As a matter of human nature, individuals who are trusted want to be trustworthy, and this leads to a society which really functions properly. What becomes of formal laws? Aborted."

Unquote

Well then, if any law that deals with 'moral choices' should be aborted (excepting of course those involving those incapable of giving informed consent) we should abort all laws dealing with incest, so long as all the people involved are over 18....

Is that really what is being said here?

So Mr McConvill, you would have no legal difficulty with your children screwing each other? Or perhaps your mother having sex with your brother? I am sure that some families would argue that they are making 'right choices' in this regard.

What about teachers and students, so long as the students are over the age of consent? Or at your university, I figure that you would argue that staff and students should be able to shag each other to their hearts' content. Anything else would mean that they are not worthy of trust.

What we have here is an argument reminding me of the question ,"what came first, the chicken or the egg." In the abortion issue, it is fundamentally about an individual having sovereignty over their own body. That there is a potential life growing in that body does not supersede the original owners as long as there is dependence by the fetus for its own existence. It is a parasite until it is capable of surviving on its own. Have you never seen the movie "Alien" with Sigourney Weaver?

As to any man having a right to tell a woman whom he has knocked up, "No you cannot have an abortion." I say he gave up any right to SAY ANYTHING WHEN HE ELECTED TO TAKE OFF HIS PANTS.

That goes for government too! Government does not own its citizens. Government serves its citizens. The quicker we remind our governments of this long forgotten fact the better off we will be.

I'm tired of the attempts to control every aspect of our lives. It doesn't work. You can't control everything or everybody. This continued attitude of control leads to bigger and bigger and less responsive government. It leads to government that sees it's own life as more important than the citizens it serves.

I could say more, but I like to be brief. Thank you for the Forum

You are kidding Mr McConville. "The law and morality are different entities"? I think that you had better rethink that one.

The laws of every society are a reflection of their own particular cultural values. "Morality" is simply the tacitly held values upon which a prevailing culture is based. The concepts of morality, culture, and legal principles, are therefore inextricably intertwined.

The biggest factor in the abortion debate is who's culturally derived moral values dictate to our lawmakers what is legally considered right or wrong. Fortunately, we live in a society which is still predominately Protestant/ agnostic and the moral principles of this demographic group considers abortion to be an individual right. At the moment, this groups moral values are making the laws.

If Australia was a majority Catholic country, then Catholic moral values would be the primary factor in making Australia's laws. Catholicism's culturally derived moral values consider abortion as murder. And murder is against the law.

If Australia was a majority Muslim country then Australia's laws would be based upon Islamic culture, and Islamic moral concepts of what is right and wrong. And those moral values are very different from either the Catholics or the Prots.

The fundamental basis for your opinion is self evidently invalid.

For those of you who wish to know we may well ask where did the law come from?
The source of Australian law is NOT morality but Common law which has been influenced by Roman law. please don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#Anthropology_of_law

Ah you say. But Common law is based on morality. No. Afraid not. Wikipedia defines Common law as "an Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, which is based on unwritten laws developed through judicial decisions that create binding precedent." As you can see NO mention of morality.

How about Roman law? That surely was based on morality. Wrong again! Wikipedia defines 3 sources for Roman law The decisions of its magistrates, custom & jurisprudence. No mention of morality here either. Read it for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_law

In fact neither the Roman faith nor the anglo saxon faith [before christianity] had ANY morality which was linked with their religion. To them religion was simply a mercantile agreement with the gods. I'll sacrifice to you & you help me. NO possible source of morality there.

So what is the basis of our law I hear you ask? Simple! Jurisprudence. Which may be defined as the application of reason to the law. Read it for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence

But why can't we have our laws based on morality? Surely some of them already are? That I will deal with in My next post.

As some posters have pointed out, there are indeed moral issues where laws are required, in a functioning democracy. The question
is about how decisions are made to implement laws and which laws.

Religion has long claimed to be the source of objective morality and religions like the Catholic Church have put in huge effort to lobby Govts and politicians, to enforce their so called god given moral code. Mind you, not a scrap of substantiated evidence of them being in touch with any god, but that does not seem to stop them trying.

At the end of the day, what we see as moral is a subjective decision, but at least we can reason about these things. If we take the age of consent, its a line we draw in the sand. I don't have a problem if laws are drawn up and implemented, based on that ability to reason.

Where I have a problem is when people want to force me to live by laws which they claim to believe in, because of their belief in the supernatural, ie usually organised religion.

Just as I will argue that its the Catholic Churches business to preach to its flock, not to tell me what is moral and what isn't unless they have some evidence for their claims, I don't think that people living in a 51% Muslim majority country, should be forced to live under Islamic law either. Thats not my concept of a modern democracy, thats more about religious tyranny by the masses.

There is a very poor man who is barely surviving. He has a very wealthy grandmother whom he dislikes. The poor man however knows that he is to be left a large sum of money in his grandmother’s will. The poor man manages to kill the grandmother without getting caught.

Did the poor man act rationally? Surely the answer is yes. His financial problems are solved and only at the expense of an old woman that he didn’t like.

Did this person act morally? If we believe murder to be wrong then surely the answer is no.

If the law is to be based solely on rationality then this man murdered a woman but committed no crime.

Are advocates of a purely rational approach to law happy with that outcome?

It could easily be argued that the man acted irrationaly and immorally, for good reasons.

For it is rational to ask ourselves what kind of community we want to live in, one where we kill each other and live in terror, in danger of losing our lives, or one in which we cooperate and respect each others lives, rights and property.

As there would always be somebody, who could shoot faster, steal more, rape our wives etc, in a lawless society, clearly a peaceful society is the more pleasant one and one where as a group we make far more progress. As respecting the rights of others is part of that, it would be both irrational and immoral to commit murder.

To me thats a far better reason then fearing burning forever or worrying about judgement day.

Continued from previous post.
Morality is NOT the basis for Australian law. How can I prove this? Easily. The basis for our laws would affect all areas of the law. What is the moral basis of corporate law, administrative law, tax law or constitutional law? Obviously none. They are based on reason. But if there are areas of the law NOT based on morality then morality cannot be the basis of our laws.

Another point to consider. Australian society possesses two types of morality. Societal morality which has influenced some of our laws. And Christian morality. They are not the same. Want proof? Consider this. If Australian society's morality & christian morality were the same then abortion would still be illegal. Virtually every christian denomination condemns abortion as being against the will of God. Yet the majority of Australians hold to the view that abortion should be kept legal. The majority of Australians also have no problem with premarital sex despite the fact that the majority of Christian denominations [both Catholic & protestant oppose it] The two moralities are obviously in conflict & therefore cannot be the same. It follows from this then that society's morality & NOT christian morality has influenced our laws.

As we have seen our laws come from Common law & have been influenced by both Roman law & societal morality. What happens if they conflict? How can we choose between them? Easily. Jurisprudence. i.e Reason applied to the law.

But you ask why can't we base our laws on Christian morality? But which morality is that? Some Christian sects hold that dancing is evil. Others that drinking or smoking is wrong. Virtually all of them condemn premarital sex & abortion. Want to bring in any of these intrusive laws do you? Which christian denomination got it right & how do we decide? There are good reasons why our society is secular. And since our society is secular then any basis for our laws MUST support that secularity. Reason & reason alone does this. Why? Because reason plays no favourites.

I have just read in my local rag another case of the law being an ass, mainly due to the people who make the laws, whilst well intentioned and playing to the masses, have not a clue or ability to reason.

This week a British man was arrested by police on Bondi Beach, charged and fined $500 for taking photographs in a public place.

Yes, a public place.

There was no risk of the photographs being taken for potential terrorist use. Neither were the people being photographed doing anything in public that they minded people knowing about, otherwise they would not have been acting that way in public.

This man was arrested, charged and fined $500 for taking photographs of women who were topless on Bondi Beach. There is no question that the women were topless in a public place by choice, they were not coherced. There was no question that these women did not choose to uncover their breasts in a public manner. It does not matter that some in the community would find the display of breasts on a public beach to be offensive.

He was charged and found guilty of acting in an offensive manner in a public place.

It absolutely seems now that there is an assumption of privacy in a public place.

So, a warning - don't take photos of people in public, whether on a beach or anywhere else.

Don't assume that ypu can take photos of a crowd of people, because in that crowd in a public place there may be a woman wearing a short skirt or shorts who does not want her photo taken.

So: Why don't the police simply arrest and charge anyone in public who has a camera ready for use?

Charge them with the intention of acting in an offensive manner...

Apparently it wasn't his taking the photographs that was the problem, it was his associated leering behaviour. If he'd simply taken the photos there would have been no problem. When was the last time a newsmedia photographer was arrested for photographing topless women on a city beach?

There is no expectation of privacy in a public place in Australia. But everyone should expect not to be subjected to offensive behaviour. This isn't about morality, it's purely practical. Who would want to live in a society where a creep could go around perving in a woman's face and ogling her breasts simply because she was sunbathing on a beach?

The author and Bosk make a common mistake. They insinuate and confound the semantics of the relatively modern and derivative term 'moral' in the place of the less derivative and more technical term 'more' (moray).

The law, at least since Hammurabi, has been based on a codification of the norms and 'mores' of a particular society. This is the semantic root, linguistically and historically, of 'moral'. Hence, semantically at least, the law is, by virtue of codification of 'mores', based on morality. But then, lawyers make a living out of obfuscating, circumventing, and corrupting common language - why would we expect semantic accuracy from them, it is not in their interests. And why would we accept their semantically inaccurate arguments, it is not in our interests.

odsoc

Osdoc
I'm afraid it's you who've m,ade the mistake. Quote "The law, at least since Hammurabi, has been based on a codification of the norms and 'mores' of a particular society."

Two points:
1) This statement is merely an assertion. Evidence please.

2) Any claimed basis for the law must have influenced all areas of the law not just some. What mores were the influence behind corporate law, administrative law, tax law and constitutional law? None! But that means these areas of the law were uninfluenced by the mores of society. Therefore there are some areas of the law uninfluenced by the mores of society & therefore the mores of society cannot be the basis of the law, since the basis of law MUST have influenced ALL areas of law. QED.

Peter P wrote:

Apparently it wasn't his taking the photographs that was the problem, it was his associated leering behaviour. If he'd simply taken the photos there would have been no problem. When was the last time a newsmedia photographer was arrested for photographing topless women on a city beach?

There is no expectation of privacy in a public place in Australia. But everyone should expect not to be subjected to offensive behaviour. This isn't about morality, it's purely practical. Who would want to live in a society where a creep could go around perving in a woman's face and ogling her breasts simply because she was sunbathing on a beach?

----

If he had been taking the photos with a telephone lens, so that he wasn't in the woman's face he would still have been just as 'guilty' under the Act.

As I said, maybe we should just ban ALL photography in public places: and there has been debate even in OLO re this:

see

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3649

Critics of the council proposals to ban photography pointed out what should be a self-evident fact - that, rightly or wrongly, topless women in public places should anticipate being ogled, and that if they do not like it they have the choice of covering up or staying at home. A voyeuristic reaction from people sharing a public place - including those who wish to remember the scene through making a photographic image of it - should be anticipated by the scantly-clad.

Others came to the defence of the women, saying that photographers invade their right to privacy. But, hold on - what right to privacy is this? Surely it must be conceded that appearing in a public place cancels any assumed right to privacy. How can one be private and public at the same time?

----

so, should people have the right to privacy in a public place or not?

Petty Junior Satanic Feminist, what you have provided us with is a value of human life that is relative to scientific progress.

By claiming that until a child is able to be kept alive independantly of its mother that it be considered a parasite able to be abortion, you are stating that abortions should be able to occur up until a baby is about 13 weeks old, because babies born prematurely at that time have been kept alive by the wonders of modern technology in nations such as France. In Australia, it is generally accepted that 22/23 weeks is the time of viability, though this is behind the times.

The true problem with the idea that because there is dependancy, there is a right to choose, is that if applied "rationally", then we should allow infanticide. Seeing, however, as the state claims a right to take away a child, and seeing that the state could provide medical care to a child of 12 to 13 weeks of age or more, then it is not officially a dependant child, because it can survive if not within the womb. In the third world, where medical technology is poorer, and the state less assertive in its duty of care to children, infanticide would be morally permissable in your eyes.

This is the inherant contradiction in our laws regarding the unborn. To punch a woman in the gut causing a miscarriage would render you charged with murder. For that woman to pop a pill or go to a surgeon for an abortion, she is exercising a legitimate choice. Here, a value is placed upon human life that is relative, relative to the mother's feelings towards it.

(Continued below)

In Australia it is not actually based, as you say, on the dependancy of the child, but rather on any possible negative affects it has against the mother. This exact definition varies from state to state. There are some discrepencies, such as Western Australia allowing for social and family reasons, and the ACT not recognising it as illegal in any circumstance. Queensland's McGuire ruling in 1986 stated forcefully that that the state "should rightly use its authority to see that abortion on whim or caprice does not insidiously filter into our society. There is no legal justification for abortion on demand" and that abortions laws are "a humane doctrine for humanitarian purposes, but it cannot be made the excuse for every inconvenient conception."

From this, one would derive the idea that there is an inherant worth to an unborn child, however that it acknowledges that due to the facts of pregnancy and circumstance, woman can be endangered by pregnancies, and in these circumstances choice should be offered. Western Australia offers a very lax interpretation of this idea, and the ACT gives the unborn a value when acted upon by another, unless that be a doctor under permission of the bearer. The ACT's position has no sound ethical basis, due to its inability to prescribe one uniform value to life. Western Australia, and, in practice, most of the states, could be accused of not upholding the value of life due to permissive attitudes to abortion on whim.

I would be interested to see the breakdown of abortion rates by state to see whether they are uniform across Australia, or whether the individual laws, practices and demographics of each state or territory influence the abortion rates. Only then could we have a proper analysis of the situation. Only South Australia has proper recording of abortion information.

This article tends to belittle the "little" Mary's out there and seems to be trying to trivialise the issue of abortion.
It's one thing to say that it's Mary's choice to have an abortion but it's another thing to say it's her problem.
If all you do is offer Mary information and no help beyond that then the abortion statistic is sure to rise. I doubt even the hard-line pro-choicers really want a rising abortion rate.

So, Yabby, what if the grandmother murderer (let’s call him Mr X) gets caught and he comes before you, the judge, in his court case where he is found guilty. Would you say to him, “Mr X you are going to jail. Please note however that you are going to jail not because murdering your grandmother was wrong. Rather, you are going to jail because it is reasonable for me and other people to be scared that you might kill us.”

In reply Mr X says, “But you have nothing to fear from me as I am now wealthy and I won’t need to kill anyone else.”

Judge: “But other people may follow your example.”

Mr X: “So I am to be sent to jail for 20 years even though I have done nothing wrong and I’m not a threat to the community. Some justice!

“You say law must be based on reason rather than morality: it may have been perfectly reasonable for the southern states of America to retain slavery – so do you believe slavery should have been retained?”

GP, you forget of course that the bible was used my many to in fact justify slavery. So much for help from so called divine revelation :)

You forget that if society deems something to be morally wrong, based on reason, its perhaps even more wrong then if somebody claims to be in touch with the almighty. Going to jail is not just
about somebody not doing it again by the way, its exclusion from society for crimes committed. So your Mr x would go to jail for the same reasons as they do now.

We are free to reason about morality and to draw our line in the sand where we think it should be. Look at the age of consent as an example.

In fact, if you really want to understand ethics and morality, studying primatology is rather interesting. Many species don't kill those of their own tribe. Selfish animals, who don't share food, are excluded etc. Frans de Waals "Good Natured" and "Chimpanzee Politics" make for interesting reading and the realisation that morality and ethics are grounded in biology, particularly in social
species.

But Yabby you didn’t answer my question! If a rational case for slavery is made, as could have been done by southerners in the US, should we accept slavery as being moral - at least for them then?

I have no problem with the idea that rationality and morality go together by the way. I don't think they need to be in conflict.

The problem for you it seems is that you are just manufacturing the notion of morality. I take it that you do not believe there are any objective moral values? If ‘morality’ just evolved over time then there is no such thing as morality at all, in the sense it is normally understood, but just behaviour that we choose to call right or wrong.

Since the notions of right and wrong are just made up then anything, given the right circumstances could be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. (As with slavery above.) The really wise person in your world would be the ethical egoist who encourages others to be moral – so that society is safe and ordered for his benefit - but all the time he secretly does whatever is best for his own interests. And why shouldn’t he? – after all there are no moral ansolutes so he is not doing anything wrong by this behaviour and he gets to live the most comfortable life. Of course, if everyone wakes up to what is going on and becomes ethical egoists then it really gets messy.

GP, to answer your questions further, so that we don't bog down in semantics, we need a common definition of morality. Descriptive morality differs from normative definitions of morality. Religious
morality takes a different slant again to secular morality. Secular morality is how our behaviour affects others, religious morality goes further, claiming things like homosexuality, masturbation etc to be immoral.

My own view is this: We evolved as a social species, to include in our behaviour, traits which are good for the harmonious coexistence of our species and its survival. Not killing our own, empathy, altruism and reciprocal altruism, nurturing etc, are all grounded in biology and are the basis for normative definitions of morality.

Out of that we can then reason about so called descriptive morality,
one definition is: "Morality is an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behaviour that affects others, and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal"

Based on those reasonings, your slaves would not be seen as moral and nor would your Mr X killer.

So what is your definition of morality?

Morality is about how we should live – there are normative moral facts that tell us that there are some things we ought to do and some things we ought not do. I believe these moral facts are objective and universal and given by God.

You say that you believe that our moral norms have evolved because they assist the survival of the species. I have a couple of problems with this. Firstly, it seems to require that there must be some sort of biological imperative for life to continue and flourish. But if materialistic evolution is true, then there are no imperatives at all. Life has just happened to occur and if life should happen to cease then that is neither here nor there – that is just what has happened to occur. ‘Nature’ neither knows nor cares whether there is life or not. We, human beings, might care but we are at the wrong end of the evolutionary tree.

Secondly, if you are correct, human beings may regard moral feelings as having been biologically useful in so far as they may have helped get us to this point in our evolution, but why should we care about them now? We know that they are not true – we don’t really have any moral obligations in an evolved materialistic universe – so why should we care about them? That again leads me to say that the wise man in your universe is the ethical egoist.

You finished saying, ‘Based on those reasonings, your slaves would not be seen as moral and nor would your Mr X killer.’ Is that what you meant to say – if so I’m not sure what you mean. As well, in the definition of morality you give you say it lessens evil. What do you mean by evil?

Bosk
Sorry to take so long, 24 hour limits, sleep and business.

Try: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html

"When the Semitic tribes settled in the cities of Babylonia, their tribal custom passed over into city law."
and
"Almost all trace of tribal custom has already disappeared from the law of the Code. It is state-law; - alike self-help, blood-feud, marriage by capture, are absent; though family solidarity, district responsibility, ordeal, the lex talionis, are primitive features that remain. "

"Based upon", not "literally embodied in", is my argument and you can read the rest for yourself.

Your assertion that administrative law, tax, law and corporate law are not based on 'mores' and norms of society seems to me a specious and false premise. Taxes were part of a range of tribal customs and societies - including Anglo Saxon. "A short history of the common law" is a must read if you doubt this point. Jacobs "Systems of survival" and various histories of mercantile practice also show how commercial law is based on customs and practices of different societies (like the Florentine merchants and proto double entry book-keeping).

Roman law is based on the customs and practices of the Etruscans, among others.

Codification of custom and practice as law removes it one step from the norms and 'mores' of the society, which often persist long enough to conclict with the evolving code interestingly. But this does not remove custom and practice (including norms and 'mores')as the basis of the law.

So, your QED may have been premature. And, while I respect Wikpedia as a source, sometimes it pays to dig a little deeper.

odsoc

GP, clearly we have different definitions of morality, but then its an ambiguous term.

I don't see why you think that there should be some biological imperative, simply conditions suitable or not for biological life.
Mars spins away, as a planet of rocks. Earth spun away for billions of years, with little more then algae etc growing. Conditions changed, radiation levels dropped, us mammals are quite late in the evolutionary scheme of things. If fighting with each other means that we cause radiation levels to rise again, perhaps our planet will spin with not much more then insects aboard. No, I don't think that
nature cares or feels.

I can't see why you think that in that case morals should not matter anymore. As long as people live as social beings, with others, wanting acceptance from others, they have to behave in ways to obtain acceptance from others. Would you have friends, if you tried to kill them, stole from them, cheated them? If you you showed no empathy, when your friends had problems, would they still be your friends? Clearly your ethical egoist would be a lonely being, all on his own and if he had no contact with others, then his morals would not affect them.

People do things for many reasons, including being "driven" by genetic attributes. Only a small part of the mind is for thinking, lots of other influences affect behaviour. Free will as we call it, is less free then we think.

Yabby, regarding a biological imperative, you said yourself – “We evolved traits which are good for the harmonious coexistence of our species and its survival. Not killing our own, empathy, altruism and reciprocal altruism, nurturing etc, are all grounded in biology and are the basis for normative definitions of morality.”

If there was no biological imperative for these things to evolve, then the only alternative explanation for them (other than God) is that they somehow incredibly just fluked into existence. If that is so then there is no sense of ‘ought’ about your morality. Why should we have any sense of responsibility to a ‘morality’ which came into existence through random, mindless processes and which has no inherent meaning or purpose?

What you seem to be saying is that we should be ‘moral’ because ultimately it will be in our own self-interest to do so. That though seems to go against the essence of what morality is normally understood to mean. Morality is about genuine selflessness simply because it is the right thing to do – not about acting selflessly because it will actually be good for me!

And please don’t misunderstand the ethical egoist – he goes around promoting ethical behaviour and everyone thinks he is a fine fellow because of that, but all the while he secretly acts in his own self-interest whenever he can get away with it. He does this because he believes there are no actual moral absolutes – he won’t ever have to give an account so long as he gets away with it – and it certainly makes his life safer and more orderly if everyone else is trying to behave morally. I think there are probably lots of ethical egoists out there.

Now if there is no genuine libertarian free will, there’s no morality at all!

GP, rather then looking at evolution as a fluke, you have to see it as a numbers game. Every time that copulation takes place and the dna of two individuals of any species join together, the random way in which that dna joins or is distorted, means it can be expressed as new and different genetic traits. In times gone past, with much higher radiation levels present, genetic mutations would have been far more common. Take a packet of seeds, irradiate them and even today, you will get all kinds of new and strange plants emerge. Its a technique used by plant breeders, even today.

99% may fail, but the 1% which thrives in a new evolutionaty niche,
will soon multiply to tell the tale. Intelligence, cooperation,
empathy, altruism, etc, were all evolutionary niches for primates,
for we could neither run very fast nor swim very well. So I still don't see the imperative, simply that species will occupy niches that are available. As long as a fox can run faster then a rabbit for instance, dinner and survival are assured.

You are defining what morality ought to mean, based on your understanding and defition of it. See it in evolutionary terms and it makes perfect sense to have evolved as it did. Those individuals with attributes that you define as moral, would clearly do better and have more offspring, amongst a social species of other individuals.

You are correct, ethical egoists exist. Social species respond. People gossip, compare notes, warn each other of certain individuals, these days they even produce tv programmes about them.
So the chances of your ethical egoist getting away with it all his life are not so good. Once he is exposed, he will become a social leper.

My 350 words are just about used up, I'll discuss your free will question in the next post.

odsoc
That reply was a beautiful piece of sophistry. I admire the attempt to conflate the meaning of custom & morality. Main problem: Custom & Morality are not the same.
While I agree that all morality is custom the reverse is NOT true. That's like saying because all roses are flowers then it's equally true that all flowers are roses. Customs can mean many things other than morality just like flowers can mean many things other than roses.
You then mention how the semites conquering Babylon wrote their CUSTOMS [note NOT morality] into the city's laws.

5 points.

1)Nowhere in your article link does it say that all the Babylonian laws were based on these new customs merely that the customs of the conquerers were added.
2) Customs [and indeed morality itself] may be said to be an attempt to meet a perceived need in society. The custom or morality is abandoned if it is felt the need is not met. Now this sounds like early attempts at reasoning to me. Ergo any attempts to bring custom into the law rely on early applications of reason. Therefore reason is ulimately the basis of the law.
3) If you had read my earlier post I had already admitted that custom, & morality had influenced some laws. But they were not the basis for all the laws. This being so the laws can conflict as indeed morality itself conflicts sometimes. How are we to decide between these conflicts except through the application of reason.
4) It may interest you to know that over 32 law professors in America have given evidence in court that American law is secularly based. Now American law, by & large is based on Common law just like us. So we too are secularly based.
5) Finally if all law is merely based on custom then we can have no new laws to cope with changing conditions. Why? Because customs have not yet developed to make such laws possible. But we do have such laws. Ergo our laws are NOT all based on custom.

GP, now to free will. fMRI machines are showing us what goes on in the brain, so neuroscience has leaped ahead. Susan Greenfield does an experiment, you might have even seen on TV. Use your free will to push a button when you decide to. The brain activity associated with that, starts well before you make that decision. So how free was that? Its an interesting experiment.

Next point- What we do involves both nature and nurture. Genes don't determine behaviour, but they certainly influence behaviour.
All those ligands, peptides, hormones etc affect how we feel and act.
Every so called free will decision made in the rational centres of the brain, is also affected by the emotional circuits. Some we are aware of, others not, but they still affect our decision making process. The stronger an emotion, the less we can reason. In a rage we hardly think at all. If we say suffer from depression, due to low serotonin levels, our decision would most likely be different then if we are happy, or angry etc. Some people are emotionally engulfed.
So they act on their feelings, then rationalise the whole thing away to justify it. Usually they are not even aware of it.

If we look at the mind of a psychopath. He feels to empathy, no caring, no love, just cold hard calculations. Is that then free will
to make rational decisions? Of course we lock him up, he lacks morality. Why do you think that those things that we define as moral, are not part of our genetic makeup?

Odsoc and Bosk,

I have no background in law and frankly have no interest. This disinterest stems from a perception that the justice industry is so inefficient, that one could best be served by staying completely out. Not only in cost of bringing about any outcome, but the fact that neither the cost nor the outcome can be reasonably known beforehand. When one leaves criminal law out (as it relates to neither custom nor morality :-(), justice is served 50% of the time - at best. Often both parties to the proceedings lose.

Having said that, what is case law if not custom? Where does reason come into proceedings when a non-guilty party can be made to compensate the guilty party? Sounds more like custom and some misguided sense of morality to me. What kind of reason is used to determine that all contracts and agreements made in good faith, have no standing? What kind of law is Family Law?

Yabby – I read of another experiment where a neuroscientist found that by putting a probe into a certain spot in a patient’s brain he could make the man’s arm move. He then told the patient, who was conscious, to try and hold down his arm with his other hand to see if he could stop it moving when he inserted the probe again. The patient was able to do so. Results such as that caused that scientist to change his belief in a completely materialistic explanation for the human mind.

I have no problem believing that there is an interaction between the physical brain and the non-physical mind - that which enables us to have free will. A person’s free will can be inhibited or influenced by their brain chemistry. But the important question is, is a mixture of brain chemistry and external physical factors totally responsible for our thoughts and behaviour?

If it is the case we have no free will then several absurdities follow – for one thing we cannot hold anyone responsible for anything – good or bad - as they could not have done otherwise and so any moral discussion is pointless. But much more importantly, we would have no reason to believe anything that is said, no matter how rational we may think we are being. Whatever thoughts or words that happen to arise in our brains would be due only to a complex combination of physical processes over which we have no control. So non-physical ideas and arguments count for nothing. Our words are just noises. In a world with no free will nothing is as it seems – we can’t even meaningfully talk about a truly deterministic world as everything is based upon a presumption that we are free agents and not merely mechanical machines.

GP, I'm not claiming total determinism as some do. What I am saying is that there are many influences on our ability to reason,
many of which we are not even aware of, happening at the subconcious level. In other words, those things still influence our reasoning process. In that case what we have is not really free will, but limited will so to speek, limited by these other factors.

All these genetic traits influencing behaviour, certainly gives me
a better understanding of people and the world. Some people have
addictive personalities for instance. Gambling, drugs, whatever.
They have a huge problem with these things, if it was simply free will they could rationaly just walk away easily. They can't.

I also believe that some people need religion to cope with life,
some don't. Some are anxious without that kind of belief, others not.
That influences their reasoning ability and decisions. Fair enough.

Yabby, so in your view what enables people to have even a measure of free will? For materialists, and that is most evolutionists, there is absolutely no room for anything non-material which would allow for us to be even partially free in our will. Can a non-material free will evolve? It is very hard to imagine how.

GP, again its easy to get bogged down in semantics here. In my understanding of the brain, it evolved in three stages. Our so called reptilian brain, which controls things like breathing and heartbeat etc. Our limbic system, which governs emotions, ie. our inmpulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled on us. Lastly our rational centre, which combines information from various centres, short term and long term memory etc and lets us make deductions from this information.

Based on the evidence, I can only conclude that the brain has a certain machine like funtion. If we look at people who had accidents, had bits of their brains removed in warfare etc, their personalities changed overnight. If we took a GP or a Yabby and someone altered the neural circuitry, we would not be the same people that we are now. In that sense my understanding of the brain is materialistic, there is no evidence of supernatural input.

Was it possible for brains to evolve an ability to deduce things, based on available information? Sure, why not?

But lets ask a question. How free is Osama bin Laden, to decide tomorrow to become say a Catholic?

He spent his whole life learning the Koran off by heart. All those around him, claimed it as the virtual truth. His emotions are tied up in his belief in Allah and what he has learned all his life. He has not been exposed to other philosophies, to any degree. Osama
is a product of his genes and his environment. Would rejecting all those things not be seen as irrational in his mind? So how free is his free will really?